The Saddam Trial thread

[Otherwise known as the "Count as many glaring double standards as you can thread"]

From today's BBC: "During her testimony, the woman, known as Witness A, said she had been forced to take off her clothes by a security agent after being detained in Dujail. "He raised my legs up and tied up my hands. He continued administering electric shocks and beating me," she told the special Iraqi court, sobbing. Afterwards, she said, she was held in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison for four years. Many of her relatives were also detained, the witness added. Questioned by the judge, the woman could not pin any specific blame against any of the defendants. She just said that Saddam Hussein was responsible for her treatment because he was running the country."

"A third witness, Witness C, testified that he was taken by security forces along with his parents and two sisters, who he described as infants, and spent 11 months at Abu Ghraib where his father died after being beaten on the head. "They used to bring men to the women's room and ask them to bark like dogs," he said.

"My father died in prison and I was not able to see him. He was in a room about 50m (164ft) from me. He was 65 and he was suffering heart problems.""

Now I'm no lawyer, but I thought the trial was concerned with the murder of villages in reprisal for an assassination attempt on Hussien. What exactly does all of this have to do with that crime?

From a BBC Analysis article concerning the same witnesses as mentioned above:

"Her testimony was very moving [recently the BBC upheld a complaint against one of its journalist for saying she cried at Arafat's funeral - actually I kind of agree with this ruling, but how can this journalist then say this testimony was "moving"?], and confirmed much that is known about conditions in Saddam's gaols. Yet questions were soon raised about the value to the prosecution of what Witness A had said. The senior judge himself told her: "The details you are giving now are different from those you gave when your examination took place." "This is true," she answered."

Character witnesses? What creeped me out yesterday was the witness saying he saw a meat grinder in one of the interogation rooms with skin and hair and blood in it. *shiver*