BAGHDAD, May 31: The chief prosecutor in the trial of Saddam Hussein over the mass killing of Shia villagers was forced to defend himself in court on Wednesday against accusations he had fabricated the case.

Defence witnesses accused prosecutor Jaafar al-Mussawi of coaching witnesses and offering bribes if they testified against Saddam over the crackdown against Shias from Dujail village after an attempt on the former president’s life in 1982.

Several witnesses were detained after making their statements, US officials said, emphasising that they were not arrested but in custody pending an investigation.

“He gave me 500 dollars and they threatened me if I ever told anyone about it,” one witness said of Mussawi, in testimony that prompted defence calls for the trial to be adjourned.

“They wanted me to give false testimony against Saddam Hussein in an American military base in March or April 2004,” added the anonymous witness who was 14 at the time of the assassination bid.

Witnesses charged on Tuesday that the prosecutor had visited Dujail in 2004 to drum up testimony against Saddam — and they also claimed many of the alleged victims of the crackdown were still alive.

The prosecution says hundreds of villagers were rounded up after the assassination bid, many were tortured and 148 executed.

Saddam and his seven co-defendants are being tried on charges of crimes against humanity including murder and torture over the crackdown and face execution by hanging if found guilty.

At the start of the latest hearing, the defence showed a video of a man said to be Mussawi attending an anti-Saddam rally sponsored by several of the complainant witnesses in Dujail.

Mussawi denied he had ever been in Dujail and produced in court Abdel Aziz Mohammed Bandar, an official from the Dawa party, who looks remarkably like the prosecutor and had himself attended the rally.

The prosecutor struck back at his accusers, calling for the witness testimony of the past two days to be disallowed.

“We note that yesterday and today, there has been a fabricated attack against the prosecution, it is obvious that the witnesses are being coached and trained to do that,” he said.

Mussawi said he would file a complaint against lead Saddam defence counsel Khalil al-Dulaimi and the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya channel that originally aired the footage from the Dujail rally.

Presiding judge Rauf Abdel Rahman criticised the defence witness allegations, saying: “How can you allow someone to submit testimony to condemn the prosecutor?” Saddam himself then rose in defence of the witnesses, saying these threats could influence their testimony.

“None of the complainant witnesses get threatened,” he said. “Maybe they can say Saddam Hussein is a dictator, but they can’t say he is liar or that is hands aren’t clean.”

US officials would not confirm the number of defence witnesses detained, but the Dubai-based satellite network Al-Arabiya said four witnesses were being held.

“They are being detained for an investigation so that they remain in Baghdad to ask them questions about their testimonies and the allegations that prosecutor Jaafar al-Mussawi was at this celebration in Dujail,” the official said.

THROWN OUT: a visibly irate judge Abdel Rahman, a Kurd, threw Barzan, the former president’s half-brother and Iraq’s former intelligence chief, out of the courtroom after his latest tirade.

“I have no complex against the Kurds, some of my best friends are Kurds,” Mr Barzan said during a long speech.

“Stop referring to me as a Kurd,” retorted the judge as he ordered him out of the courtroom. “Every word he utters is like a poisoned knife directed against me.”

The trial was adjourned until June 5.

One of the defence lawyers said on Tuesday that a defence witness who testified recently had been killed, a claim that could not be confirmed.

The trial has been marred by the murder of two defence lawyers and the January resignation of the first chief judge, as well as frequent outbursts by Saddam and his co-defendants.

So far, 46 defence witnesses have testified and once this testimony is complete, defence lawyers will give their closing statements, followed by defendants’ final statements, which will mark the end of the trial.—AFP