THE policeman sitting in the grimy coffee shop in Dahuk spat dramatically at the television screen as his friends shouted profanities. It may not have been seemly behaviour, but Walid Hkalid Mussa had waited for nearly two decades for this moment: to see Saddam Hussein in a cage and on trial for the genocide of his people, his family.

A similar scene was played out in barber shops, restaurants and offices across northern Iraq yesterday as normal life was frozen for the first day of Saddam’s trial for the murder of up to 100,000 people during the 1988 Anfal campaigns against the Kurds.

Mr Mussa’s 18-year-old brother was shot dead that year, and the memory haunts him. “I’m very happy to see Saddam in a cage,” he said. “Hopefully we will get our revenge against him. Our future will not be settled until we know what happens to Saddam.”

The Kurds estimate that Saddam’s Baath party razed more than 4,000 villages and left an estimated 800,000 people without homes during its 35-year reign.

Yesterday in Baghdad Saddam was called to account for the crimes, but he remained defiant. When Abdullah al-Amiri, the head judge, asked him to identify himself, the former dictator replied: “You know my name. My name is well known to you.”

The judge raised a book with the regulations to show to Saddam. “Do you respect this law?” Saddam paused before replying: “This is the law of the occupation.” He finally identified himself as “President of the Republic of Iraq and Commander-in-Chief of the heroic Iraqi armed forces.”

Asked to plead guilty or innocent on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, Saddam offered brazen defiance. “That would require volumes of books,” he answered. Finally Mr al-Amiri ordered a plea of innocent to be entered.

Saddam is on trial with six co-defendants, including his cousin Ali Hasan al-Majid, who directed the operation against the Kurds and who was known as Chemical Ali because of his reliance on mustard gas and nerve agents to defeat them. Dressed in a chequered red headdress and a light-coloured robe, Mr alMajid hunched over and walked with a cane. He identified himself as “Comrade and Major-General Ali Hasan al-Majid”.

Prosecutors alleged that the eight Anfal campaigns between February and August 1988 were aimed at driving Kurds from their homes into “collective villages”, which human rights groups have compared to concentration camps. Many people died in the appalling conditions there, while others were victims of gassings and a shoot-to-kill policy.

Yesterday in the countryside outside Dahuk, where Saddam’s army had flattened hamlets during Anfal, farmers gathered at homes with power generators to watch the trial.

In Beshinki, Sabiha Ahmed looked across the sloping hills and fig trees where 80 families lived until Saddam’s army flattened the village in August 1988. Saddam was barred from Kurdistan in 1991, but only 20 families have returned to build mud and cement homes in the village. Others are still squatting at the Nazarki camp where they were imprisoned.

Mrs Ahmed and her family were among those held at the camp. She says that 27 men from her village were killed and that she saw 15 people beaten or shot dead. Her son, she said, became sick and lost muscle co-ordination in his arms, leaving him disabled. After nine days, the camp guards announced that Saddam had pardoned the detainees and ordered them to dance in celebration, but the prisoners refused.

“We saw people tortured and killed in front of us. We couldn’t dance,” she said. “The trial helps a bit, but we lost a lot of people. Even if they kill Saddam, we don’t get them back. Still, it’s better than nothing.”

WHAT IS GENOCIDE?

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