Chief of Hussein’s Secret Court Testifies

The former chief of Saddam Hussein’s secret Revolutionary Court said Monday that he had personally convicted and sentenced 148 Shiite Muslims to death after a two-week hearing but later conceded that some might have been executed before the trial began.

At times looking up in defiance at the bench, at other times gazing sheepishly at the floor, Awad Hamed Bandar sparred with the chief judge and prosecutor of the U.S.-backed court that is trying him, Hussein and six others. They are accused of meting out collective punishment on the predominately Shiite Muslim village of Dujayl after shots were fired at Hussein’s motorcade there in 1982.

Bandar’s 95 minutes on the stand were his first formal testimony in the trial, which resumed Sunday after more than a week’s recess. He provided glimpses of the deposed dictatorship’s system of swift summary judgment for suspected enemies -- a system so secretive and merciless that most Iraqis dared not speak of it.

Prosecutors are trying to show that the trial in 1984 was a predetermined act of mass vengeance that qualified as a crime against humanity. They say Bandar’s court, a creation of Hussein’s Sunni Arab-led Baath Party that was independent of other tribunals, did not summon the defendants to appear but simply received intelligence police files of their alleged confessions and summarily issued death sentences.

The 61-year-old Bandar, clad in a gray dishdasha robe and a red-and-white kaffiyeh on his head, said the defendants were present with lawyers and the trial was conducted according to law.

“How were you able to try 148 people in two weeks when in this trial it takes three hours to take the statement of one defendant?” Judge Raouf Rasheed Abdel Rahman asked.

“We were at war with Iran,” Bandar replied, adding that the defendants were suspected of being members of the Iran-backed Dawa Party. “The defendants confessed that they acted against the president on orders from Iran.... If you were in my place, you would have done the same.”

Judge Abdel Rahman persisted. “In this trial, you and your lawyer have had 100 objections,” he said. “How could you manage [to finish] in two weeks?”

Bandar said the defendants had confessed to Iraq’s intelligence agency and he had read the files.

“The court had a right to make decisions in one session if the defendant confessed,” he said.

Abdel Rahman demanded to know how all 148 defendants fit into one courtroom. Bandar said the room was large and some were allowed to stand outside the defendants’ box.

Jaafar Mousawi, the prosecutor, then produced two handwritten documents from the intelligence police files. One said 46 of the 148 Dujayl suspects had been “liquidated during interrogation” before the trial. The other document listed 11 defendants between the ages of 12 and 17 -- under the legal minimum for prosecution by the court.

Bandar appeared taken aback as the prosecutor described the contents of the documents and refused to look when they were projected onto a large screen in the courtroom.

“The Revolutionary Court issued death sentences after the defendants were already dead?” the prosecutor asked. “Isn’t that strange?”

Bandar first insisted that all 148 attended the trial but, under further questioning, threw up his hands and said, “Is it so strange and surprising that someone might die in interrogation?”

Pressed to confirm that all defendants were 18 or older, the former judge said, “This was a quarter of a century ago. Do you expect me to remember?” Later Bandar conceded that he had not checked anyone’s age.

The defendant was also asked why his court’s official record of the trial mentioned no defense attorneys.

“The typist must have made a mistake,” he said.

Bandar’s inclusion in the case has parallels to the Nuremburg trials, which held Nazi judges accountable for war crimes along with other German officials after World War II.

Nehal Bhuta, an independent lawyer who attended Monday’s session, said the evidence showed clearly that Bandar “conducted an unfair trial,” but the prosecution had yet to demonstrate that this amounted to a crime against humanity.

“They are going to have to prove that he was acting knowingly according to a systematic policy to punish the people of Dujayl,” said Bhuta, who is observing the trial for Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group. “They have to show how he fits into a plan to attack Dujayl.”

Hussein has testified that he ordered the trial, and prosecutors have said he approved the death sentences.

But Hussein has said nothing about any instructions to Bandar, and the former judge said Monday that he had not received any.

The deposed president and Barzan Ibrahim Hasan, Hussein’s half brother and the chief of his intelligence police, are expected to testify this week. Three defendants testified Sunday and two Monday, in addition to Bandar.

Taha Yassin Ramadan, Hussein’s vice president, denied Monday that he took charge of destroying thousands of acres of cultivated fields and orchards -- the only role he is alleged to have played in the crackdown on the village.

He charged that his American captors kicked and beat him, deprived him of water and kept him hooded for five days. The judge promised to investigate the allegation.