Saddam’s evolving tactics
Saddam Hussein returned to court on Wednesday and after hours of quietly listening to testimony, he burst out that he had been tortured by his American captors during his imprisonment. NBC News Richard Engel was in the courtroom and responded to questions for Blogging Baghdad.
What were the headlines from Saddam’s day in court?
This was a very strong day, again, from Saddam in court. He continues to be dominating these trial proceedings, despite the efforts of the judge to keep the trial focused on the Dujail case. Saddam and his codefendants are on trial for alleged killings and torture in Dujail, Iraq after an attempt to assassinate Saddam in 1982.
We see Saddam constantly evolving his tactics. Today he was playing, first, the Islamic card.
He is always trying to make a big show for the cameras, which are playing a huge factor in this case. He tries to play to Islamic sympathies. He carries the Koran into the courtroom everyday.
Today, for the first time, he asked for a break so that he could pray. When it was prayer time, he suddenly interrupted and said, "Ah, it’s time to pray."
The judge didn’t allow the witness testimony to be interrupted for prayer time. So, eventually Saddam made a big public show, turned in his chair, clutched his Koran, and just started praying anyway in court – turning very obviously to the camera.
Then he was quite quiet for much of the rest of the day, until he saw a moment later on.
How did the outburst about torture come about?
He had heard testimony about all the torture and he made his point to say, "Listen judge, no one has asked us if we were tortured." And the judge told him, you’ll get your chance, during the defendant’s portion of this trial you’ll be able to talk about that. Saddam went on saying, that’s not fair, we should be asked about how we are being treated, because we are being mistreated.
The prosecutor went on then and said something like, "Fine, tell me, are you being tortured?"
And that’s when Saddam went on to say that he’s being tortured, he’s been beaten by the Americans, that all of the other defendants have also been beaten and tortured.
What else did Saddam talk about during his outburst?
He went on then to take advantage of this sort of tirade and he went on to talk about a whole wide variety of subjects.
He started talking about the war. He started talking about how he so was brave during the American invasion and how at one point he took an RPG and went to go confront some Americans tanks on the airport road.
He explained how his former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan told him that he shouldn’t, that it was irresponsible, and not to go because he had a national duty to uphold. But, he said that he put that aside and went anyway, but that by the time he got there, he found that the American tanks had already "retreated" back to the airport.
He said that it was not his duty to fight personally, even thought he wasn’t afraid of it.
He said that when he was captured, he chose not to fight the Americans because that was the responsibility of the brave people on the outside who are fighting, killing, and attacking the American occupying soldiers.
So, again, he was using this as a call of support to the resistance.
How else did he threaten the judges?
There were also some implied threats against the judge. In particular, one time where he told the judge to be careful – that he could be held accountable for what’s done in the courtroom, outside the courtroom. Some people saw that as something of an implied threat.
The best line goes to the chief prosecutor
EMAIL THIS
advertisement
Slide Show
- Life beyond the violence
Suicide attacks and murders due to sectarian conflict continue around Iraq. See how residents live their lives amid the attacks.
Read the Nightly News blog
