WRAP Trial adjourns until Dec 18 after brief testimony by 2 Kurdish doctors

Описание: (7 Dec 2006)
1. Wide shot of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and other defendants dock
2. Close-up of defendant Sultan Hashim, former defence minister
3. Chief Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa seated
4. Defendant Hussein Rasheed, former senior army officer
5. Defendant Ali Hassan al-Majeed
6. Dr Faiq Mohammed Ahmed Culpy, Kurdish surgeon, giving evidence
7. Defendant Sabir Abdul-Aziz al-Douri
8. SOUNDBITE: (Arabic) Dr Faiq Mohammed Ahmed Culpy, Kurdish surgeon
''Their skins (of the victims) were reddish and charred. I saw big bubbles on their skins. A large number of them (the victims) were vomiting blood or coughing blood.''
9. Chief prosecutor speaking
10. Defence lawyer speaking
11. Chief Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa speaking
12. Female lawyer speaking
13. Wide shot of defendants in dock with Hashim speaking
14. Close-up of Hashim speaking
15. Kurdish witness speaking
16. Wide shot of defendants in dock
STORYLINE:
A Kurdish surgeon told deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's genocide trial on Thursday how he treated people with severe burns, including a shepherd boy who died, after alleged chemical attacks by Saddam's regime in the late 1980s.
Doctor Faiq Mohammed Ahmed Culpy said the boy, aged eight or nine, was burned when he had been playing with pieces of a bomb dropped on his village. He died two days later.
''Their skins (of the victims) were reddish and charred. I saw big bubbles on their skins. A large number of them (the victims) were vomiting blood or coughing blood,'' Culpy explained to the court.
Culpy said the April 1987 chemical attack was the first in a string of assaults by Iraqi forces against Kurds in northern Iraq.
The doctor said he witnessed or heard accounts of dozens of deaths in separate attacks that lasted through the spring of 1988 when he treated victims of chemical deaths in several northern villages.
Two other witnesses testified that Saddam's forces rounded up Kurdish villagers at gunpoint and killed some of them after they failed to surrender to authorities.
Saddam and six co-defendants have pleaded innocent to charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their alleged roles in the 1987-88 military campaign against Kurds in northern Iraq.
The former leader and one other defendant have also pleaded innocent to the additional charge of genocide. If convicted, all could be condemned to death.
On Thursday, Saddam could be seen sitting quietly throughout the testimony.
He was present in court despite earlier threats never to appear in court again. It was not clear whether he had changed his mind or was forced to attend.
The prosecution estimates 180-thousand Kurds were killed when Saddam's army waged a scorched-earth campaign against the Kurdish population at large and separatist guerrillas.
The trial has been adjourned until 18 December.

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