Saddam's 'bizarre rant'

[RonOnGuitar]

Amanpour: Saddam's 'bizarre rant'

Thursday, July 1, 2004 Posted: 8:56 AM EDT (1256 GMT)



CNN's Christiane Amanpour



BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein appeared Thursday in a Baghdad court to hear preliminary charges against him for crimes during his rule.



CNN Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour, who was in the courtroom, talked with CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien after the hearing.



AMANPOUR: Well, I've just raced back from the courtroom to this convention center, where we're going to get the video distributed. So let me tell you about what we just saw. We saw first of all Saddam Hussein coming from an armored bus -- explosive-proof, we were told -- a tan-colored bus, very heavily armored.



He was handcuffed; he had a chain around his waist. He was flanked by two Iraqi guards, and there were other guards standing on the stairs as he was coming down from the bus into the courthouse area. He walked in; he was not shackled by the feet.



And then from inside the court, I could hear the chains were being taken off from around his waist. And the handcuffs were being taken off. Everybody was electrified, such a state of anticipation, especially the Iraqis who were in the court.



He came in, quite dignified, quite quietly, with two burly guards, one on each side, and he was quite thin. His face was dark. He had big bags under his eyes. He still has a beard, although it's been cut and trimmed. It's black with white on the chin. He has his mustache still, but it's much more neat and tidy than you can imagine when he was pulled out of that hole December 13.



He sat down in the chair, where he faced a judge who was sitting at a table across from him. On the judge's table was a Koran wrapped in green. And then the judge started by asking him whether he understood what was going on. First he asked him, "What is your name?"



Twice Saddam Hussein said, "I am Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq."



He was asked his age, whether he understood what was going on. A little bit later he was read the actual charges. But that came after quite a bit of to-and-fro between Saddam and the judge.



Saddam started by asking, "What is this court? Who are you? Under whose jurisdiction do you fall? I am the president of Iraq." We're still waiting for the full translation of this because this all was in Arabic.



There was some concern that Saddam might use this as a political platform. That didn't really happen. He was downcast; he looked defeated at other times. He kept raising his hand and asking the judge, "Please, stop. Let me ask you a few questions." He said please a lot, which I'm sure is a change for him. He kept asking, "What are the charges? Why am I here?"



Eventually he was read a series of charges, seven in all. These charges are simply the preliminary charges under the arrest warrant that he was presented with. These are not the formal indictment. This is not what he will eventually be tried for under the jurisdiction of this Iraqi Special Tribunal.



These charges involved the intentional killing of religious figures back in 1974, gassing of the Kurds in the 1980s, killing a big Kurdish family in 1983, killing of political party members over the last 30 years, the "Anfal" campaign, the suppression in March 1991 of both the Kurdish and Shiite uprisings right after the first Gulf War, and of course, the invasion of Kuwait.



It was the notion of Kuwait that got him the most agitated. He was jabbing his finger and asking the judge, "How can you as an Iraqi accuse me of Kuwait? You know that this was not an invasion. How can it be an occupation? I was doing something for the good of Iraqis. Those dogs were trying to put the price of oil down and turn Iraqi women into prostitutes."



It was a bizarre rant, and the judge actually told him to stop. He said, "I remind you that kind of language is not permissible." So he stopped.



About the gassing of the Kurds, Saddam said, "Yes, you said I was president at that time. Yes, I heard about this in the media as well."



And then toward the end, he was asked whether he could afford counsel, whether he had any legal counsel, at which point, he looked around and with a sort of half smile said, "But everybody says, the Americans say I have millions of dollars stashed in Geneva. Why shouldn't I be able to afford a lawyer?"

[RonOnGuitar]

More on Hussein's trial:



Saddam's victims are eager to see his trial



By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD

Associated Press Writer

07/01/2004



BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Firas Adnan need only open his mouth to give evidence of Saddam Hussein's legacy. Just before the regime fell, the 24-year-old laborer quarreled with a Saddam loyalist, who punished him by chopping off his tongue with a box cutter.

Now Adnan awaits the prosecution of Saddam with mixed feelings -- happy the former dictator will have to answer for his crimes but bitter because he must live with the scars from the regime.



"Saddam will stand trial, OK. But I'm handicapped. What's the use?" Adnan said Wednesday, his slurred words barely comprehensible. "It's not that I'm not happy ... But nothing will give me back my tongue. You know what I mean?"



Iraq's new government took legal custody of Saddam on Wednesday, read him his rights and informed him that he would face trial on war crimes charges.



Iraqis will get their first look at their former leader since his arrest in December when he appears in court today along with 11 of his top lieutenants. Saddam's trial is not likely to start for months, probably not before 2005.



Adnan said he would definitely watch if the trial is televised, as officials have promised.



"It should be entertaining, I'll laugh about him," Adnan said. Then he paused and added, "It's not in my nature to gloat over someone's (misfortune)."



Asked if Saddam should be executed, Adnan said no -- that would "only give him relief. It would be better if he is jailed; let him try what thousands of us have gone through."



But Adnan's mother, Fatma Ahmed interrupted: "I wish I could kill him with my own hands."



"He didn't have mercy on a mother, an old man. He is a despot, the biggest despot, Iraq will be much better without him," the 43-year-old Ahmed said.







Millions of other Iraqis understand well what Adnan is talking about. No punishment for Saddam can bring back the thousands of fathers, sons, sisters, daughters and mothers who died -- in regime torture chambers, on the streets of dusty Kurdish villages, on the battlefields in Iran.



Adnan's torment came outside his Baghdad home in front of his parents -- only two weeks before the Americans invaded Iraq. Adnan first spoke to an Associated Press reporter on April 18 shortly after U.S. troops swept into Baghdad and Saddam was ousted.



His trauma does not seem to have eased since then.



"I don't think anything will make me forget what happened to me," Adnan said Wednesday. "I don't think any woman would want to marry me."



In December 2002, Adnan got in a fight with some people in the street. A militiaman loyal to Saddam's son Odai intervened and threatened him with a gun. Adnan was so angry, he cursed Odai and Saddam.



Adnan escaped but was arrested by the militiamen a few days later, who tortured him for three months, vowing, he said, to "turn me crazy or execute me."



One day they woke him up early at prison, beat him severely, blindfolded him and took him away in a car. The vehicle stopped and he was pushed out.



"I heard people chanting 'With our soul and blood we redeem you Saddam.' I thought they were going to execute me. I started crying. When they asked me to open my mouth, I begged them to execute me," he said.



When they took off his blindfold, he saw he was in his own neighborhood and that his family were being forced to chant and wave portraits of Saddam.



But instead of killing him, the militiamen cut off part of his tongue with a box cutter. It took three tries, he said.



That was March 5, two weeks before the start of the war on Iraq. He wasn't released until mid-April. "Had the regime not fallen, they would have executed me," Adnan said.



Now he, his parents, four brothers and five sisters are crammed in one room at his grandmother's apartment -- his parents sold theirs to bribe officials to spare his life. They sleep on carpets on the floor in the house, shared by 28 members of his extended family.



On one wall in the house are framed pictures of his uncles, Qais and Hussein Suleiman, both taken from the streets by Saddam's secret service just before the 1991 Gulf War.



"I was still hoping they will come back after the war, I'm still keeping their clothes," said Hamdeya Ahmed Abed, 77, the mother of the disappeared men. "But if they haven't come back 'til now, I guess they never will.

[NRKofOver]

i think it's great he still believes in himself, as bizarre as that is. Demanding that he be addressed as President of Iraq, questioning the validity of the current government. He's obviously a lunatic, but it makes for great fun!



The real responses will come when he has to answer to killing thousands upon thousands of people. At that point I think it will start to sink in for him. If not, it will still be fun to watch him squirm and grandstand prior to that ultimate and strong judgment of his life. Maybe he'll die thinking that he was 'something', but not only will the rest of the world know what he really was, the Iraqi people will be able to say they put to rest an evil and tyranically lunatic, and more power to those people.

My music for the disenchanted masses

[DreamTone7]

Hey NRK, it sounds like you approve of the US helping the Iraqis do this. Could it be true?

[NRKofOver]

I've always been clear about my stance on the war and Saddam. I opposed attacking Iraq for apparently questionable reasons. Once we invaded this country it seemed imperative that Saddam be toppled, which we did. Even better, he was caught. Both great things. Iraq has an obligation to insure that this man is held accountable for the terrible things he's done to that nation and their people. That doesn't mean I support our decision to invade Iraq, it means that we have invaded Iraq and I can only hope and wish for the best possible outcome of that decision (as any decent human being should want).

My music for the disenchanted masses