Saddam says Americans beat and tortured him

BAGHDAD, Iraq – After listening for hours to witness accounts of torture at the hands of his regime, Saddam Hussein asserted at his trial Wednesday that he too has been the victim of prison abuse – by his American captors.

“I was beaten all over my body, and the marks are there,” the former Iraqi dictator said, making a new bid to put the U.S. and its foreign policy on trial instead of his own alleged crimes. “We were beaten by the Americans and tortured.”

Saddam’s lengthy soliloquy came near the close of the nine-hour court session, which featured long stretches of dramatic and occasionally vivid witness testimony about retribution allegedly meted out after a 1982 assassination attempt on Saddam in the village of Dujail.

The proceedings were punctuated by testy exchanges and politically charged allegations. In the end, it seemed more like a noisy tribal summit, where squabbling Iraqis often take their differences to be resolved by a sheikh, than a cold delving into facts.

Prosecutors presented three witnesses who described what became of villagers arrested en masse in 1982. They told of molten plastic used to burn prisoners and of children separated from their parents for years at a time. They described being fed gruel and being forced to drink hot, dirty water.

Rather than seeking to refute the allegations, Saddam, his attorneys and seven co-defendants attempted to counter the charges with attacks on witnesses and the trial’s American backers. At one point, Saddam seemed to concede that people had been mistreated by his government, but in the next breath he redirected the focus to what he contended was his own suffering.

“Any harm done to these witnesses is wrong and whoever did it must be punished in accord with the law,” Saddam said of the alleged victims of Dujail. “All that happened in a Third World country, as America says, and 25 years ago. But what is happening now, now, now, now? Ask any of my colleagues if they were not beaten nor have signs of beating.”

Lead prosecutor Jaafar al-Mousawi, more outspoken and forceful in presenting his case than in previous sessions, raised his voice in indignation.

“I visited you and saw an air conditioner in each room and ordered televisions for you,” he told Saddam. “If you have complaints, I will investigate and bring to court anyone who mistreated you.”

Other defendants and attorneys chimed in with their own complaints.

Barazan Ibrahim, Saddam’s half-brother and intelligence chief, alleged that six or seven of his fellow prisoners had been killed at the hands of the American soldiers.

U.S. officials later responded to the charges with scorn.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan called Saddam’s allegations “preposterous.” The former president, he said, “is being treated the exact opposite of the way his regime treated those he imprisoned and tortured simply for expressing their opinions.”

Many of the witnesses who have taken the stand so far have offered little testimony directly linking any of the defendants to abuses. But Wednesday’s third witness said that Ibrahim, the intelligence chief, personally interrogated him when he was arrested after the 1982 assassination attempt.

Testifying from behind a curtain, he said he was brought to an intelligence office and ordered by unknown officials to confess he was a member of the Dawa Party, an outlawed Shiite Muslim group that opposed Saddam and had ties to Iran.

“I told them that I had no idea what they are talking about,” he said.

The witness said he was then interrogated and tortured 10 times with electrical clamps attached to his thumbs, toes and genitalia. He said he foamed at the mouth and passed out from the pain. Then Ibrahim came to interrogate him, the witness said.

Ibrahim threatened to “tear my anus off” if he didn’t confess, the witness said.