Baghdad, Iraq – According to Saddam Hussein, the would- be assassins who ambushed his car near an Iraqi village in 1982 were working for Iran, his trial for destroying that village afterward is just an excuse for Americans to stay in Iraq, and the Iraqi judge and prosecutors are underlings preoccupied with unimportant matters.
“Do you think Saddam Hussein has no work? I have no time,” the former dictator scoffed during the fourth day of his trial Tuesday, implying that the killing of more than 140 villagers, and the torture and imprisonment of hundreds more, was a trivial matter and that he had larger issues to worry about.
By his comments and demeanor during his trial, which is being conducted in Arabic, Hussein has made it clear that he sees the proceedings through a potentate’s prism. His current predicament, he suggests, is another plot by the foes he faced as president of Iraq, and his place in the defendants’ dock is a temporary setback.
“America wants to execute Saddam Hussein. It is not the first time,” he said, referring to himself regally in the third person.
The proceedings Tuesday painted a sordid picture of authorities exacting brutal punishment on the village of Dujayl, 35 miles north of Baghdad, after shots were fired at Hussein’s motorcade there 23 years ago. Five witnesses told of relatives being killed and of horrific imprisonment and sadistic torture visited on the villagers after the incident.
But as he has listened, Hussein has not conceded an inch. Far from acting as a deflated tough stripped of power, he has exuded the haughtiness of a man who says – and appears to believe – that he is still the president of Iraq.
On Tuesday, as he started a disjointed cross-examination of a witness, Hussein lectured the courtroom lawyers on procedure as though he were still the country’s president. “Pay attention, young men,” he said.
The subject of the immediate charges against him is in essence the extermination of a village. Yet Hussein acts as if he can barely remember the events and would be appalled to have sullied his hands with them.
“Is it my job to investigate Iraqis?” he asked.
He has treated court officials with contempt, sometimes tempered with forced magnanimity. The court, he charged Tuesday, is “a stooge of the occupation.”
“I’m your president. I’m your leader for more than 30 years,” Hussein told Rizgar Mohammed Amin, the chief judge, who has the authority to sentence him to death. “I never saw you before this court. If I saw you on the street, I wouldn’t know you.”
Hussein pointed out that the assassination attempt near Dujayl was carried out by members of the Dawa party, a Shiite religious organization, as if that made it obvious that a much more powerful force was at work than village peasants.
“Iran ordered them to assassinate Saddam Hussein. That’s why they did it,” he said.
After the 10-hour session, as the chief judge left the courtroom, Hussein yelled, “Go to hell, you and all the agents of America.”
