BAGHDAD, June 26: The Iraqi court charged with trying ousted military dictator Saddam Hussein and his top aides on Sunday released footage of six of his lieutenants being interrogated about alleged crimes against Kurds.

Among those questioned a week ago were two of Saddam’s half-brothers Barzan and Watban Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti as well as the commander of the former paramilitary Quds Army, Iyad Futaih Khalifa, a statement from the Iraqi Special Tribunal said.

The Tikritis were questioned individually about the killing and deportation of the Faili Kurds, who follow the Shia school of thought, according to the statement which accompanied the voice-less footage.

Khalifa and two former Baath party senior leaders — Mohammed Zumam Abdelrazaq and Latif Nasif Jasim — were questioned separately about “ethnic cleansing operations in Kirkuk,” the statement added.

Khalifa and Mohsen Khodr Abbas, another senior Baathist, were also questioned separately about the events of 1991, the statement said, referring to Saddam’s brutal repression of a Shia uprising during the first Gulf war.

The demographic make-up of the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk was altered by Saddam’s policy of settling Sunni Arabs there in the 1980s in place of Kurds and other minorities.

Saddam and his deputies are also accused of mass murder crimes against Kurds like chemical bombing of Halabja in 1988 which killed 5000 Kurds.

The tribunal said the questioning of the six is a continuation of previous sessions and it took place in the presence of the investigating judges, prosecutors and the defence lawyer.

“We ask the sons of the oppressed Iraqi nation of all ethnicities and sects to support the tribunal and to give it their vote of confidence in order to defeat those who are trying to undermine its work,” said the tribunal.

“We also ask everyone to refer to the statements of the court as the only official source and everything else as just guessing.”

The tribunal, which was formed under the previous US-led occupation, has already released several videotapes of the questioning of Saddam and more than a dozen of his deputies since the start of June.

NATIONAL HOLIDAY: Iraq decreed a new national holiday on Sunday, restoring commemoration of the coup of July 14, 1958, which ended the British-installed monarchy and established Iraq’s first republic.

“The Iraqi government has decided that July 14 should be a national holiday to celebrate the declaration of the Iraqi Republic in 1958,” the government said in a statement.

Under military dictator Saddam Hussein, who once tried to assassinate the republic’s first prime minister Abdelkarim Kassem, July 14 was supplanted by July 17, recording the coup d’etat of 1968 which brought Saddam’s Baath party to power.

The statement did not say whether April 9, the day Baghdad fell to the invading US army in 2003, would remain a national holiday and government officials could not be reached for comment.

It was declared one by the previous, US-sponsored, government which also scrapped several other holidays, including Saddam’s birthday.

Since an election in January and the formation of a new government in April, Iraqi ministers facing another election at the end of the year have been keen to demonstrate independence from a US occupation that ended legally a year ago on June 28 but which continues in the form of major military presence.

On July 14, 1958, Kassem and fellow army officers overthrew the old order, installed by British imperial rulers. King Faisal II, his crown prince and prime minister were shot.—AFP/Reuters