BAGHDAD: He appeared as a nondescript Iraqi everyman — graying, beefy and bespectacled, and speaking in the earthy vernacular of his Tigris River valley farming town. But for several hours, Ahmed Hassan Mohammed became a hero, boldly facing off with Saddam Hussein.
Standing before a courtroom podium, Mohammed gave a rambling account of the horrors that befell him, his family and neighbours in the Shia town of Dujayl after a 1982 assassination attempt on the president. At least twice he broke down and dabbed his eyes, recounting the detention and torture of himself as well as his brothers, sisters, mother and elderly father.
Saddam and other co-defendants and their lawyers repeatedly insulted, interrupted and questioned Mohammed, but they failed to blunt the moment’s impact: For the first time, one of Saddam’s alleged victims had a chance to confront the former dictator face-to-face in court, at a distance of perhaps just seven feet.
The 38-year-old Mohammed, who described himself as a simple labourer, more than held his own on the stand. Wearing a beige suit and a reddish shirt, he glared at the gallery of defendants, often frowning at the former president. Mohammed held up his nose and seethed with contempt at such formerly fearsome figures as Saddam’s intelligence chief and half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim Hasan.
After Mohammed accused him of being culpable in the death of a 14-year-old Dujayl boy, Barzan muttered, “Go to hell.” Mohammed responded without flinching: “You and your children go to hell.” At times, Mohammed seemed to be bursting with rage, even raising his voice at Judge Rizgar Mohammad Amin when the jurist prevented him from repeating the “fattiha,”, traditionally used to commemorate the dead.
Mohammed’s testimony was filled with tearful moments, accusatory crescendos and punctuating silences. He said he was 15 when the Iraqi security forces came for him and his family a day after the assassination attempt on Saddam. Authorities took him and his family to nightmarish prisons in Baghdad and Abu Ghraib before they were banished to the desert for years, he said.
“The mask they put on my face was falling because I was so little,” he said. He added, almost in passing, that he was beaten.
“They were torturing women in front of me,” he said. “It’s OK if they torture me or my brothers. But why do you take my mother and sisters?” During cross-examination, defence attorneys hammered away at Mohammed’s credibility while sarcastically praising his performance. “Why doesn’t he go into the cinema or TV?” Barzan said. “He has good acting skills.” At several points, the lawyers appeared to succeed in pointing out that part of what Mohammed was saying was hearsay.
One of the lawyers asked Mohammed how he could have known that Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, was in Dujayl’s Baath Party headquarters. “Did you see him?” a lawyer asked. “Everyone knows he was there,” Mohammed replied.
Mohammed was also questioned about his assertion that Iraqi officials tore down the orchards of the Dujayl; how, he was asked, could he have known this if he was in jail?
“I didn’t see them cut off the trees,” he conceded, “but all the people know this is a fact.” Saddam called attention to Mohammed’s strong memory, suggesting he was trained. “This person ... memorizes everyone’s dates of birth,” he said. “This is staged.”
The former president repeatedly interrupted Mohammed’s delivery with sarcastic jibes that questioned his motives, often in subtle terms only Iraqis would catch. When Mohammed noted that his sick mother, who happened to be a Sunni, was taken in by the “good people of Ramadi” after years of banishment in a desert camp, Saddam interjected.
“You mean the Sunnis?” he said, suggesting that Mohammed, a Shia, was trying to score points by pointing out his ties to the rival sect. Saddam is also a Sunni.
But Mohammed was ready with a retort. “They are my uncles,” he said of the Sunni people of Ramadi, “and I honour them.” And in exchange after exchange, Mohammed came across as itching for a fight, ringing his hands as he waited for defendants to finish before moving in for quick lunges.
When Ramadan sarcastically referred to him as “this amazing witness” for the prosecution, Mohammed jabbed back. “I’m amazing whether you like it or not,” he said. —Dawn/Los Angeles Times News Service
