Hussein's men 'buried inmates alive'

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Prison guards under Saddam Hussein used to bury detainees alive and watch women as they bathed, occasionally shooting over their heads, a former female prisoner testified Monday in the genocide trial of the ex-president.

Speaking in Kurdish through an Arabic interpreter, the 31-year-old witness recalled what she saw as a 13-year-old girl who was detained during Saddam's offensive against the Kurds in the late 1980s.

Saddam and his co-defendants are charged with genocide against Iraq's Kurdish population in a campaign branded Operation Anfal, in which an estimated 180,000 people were killed. If convicted, the accused could be condemned to death by hanging.

The woman, who testified behind a curtain and whose name was withheld apparently for fear of reprisal, said Iraqi government forces destroyed her Kurdish village in northern Iraq in 1988 and she and some family members were imprisoned in the south.

A prison warden she identified as Hajaj -- whose name has been given by earlier witnesses in the trial -- "used to drag women, their hands and feet shackled, and leave them in a scorching sun for several hours."

"Soldiers used to watch us bathe," said the woman. The guards also fired over the women's heads as they washed.

The woman said several relatives disappeared during the offensive against the Kurds. "I know the fate of my family (members). They were buried alive," she testified.

The prosecution presented the court with documents showing that remains of the women's relatives turned up in a mass grave.

"I'd like to ask Saddam: 'What crime did women and children commit'?" the woman said in court.

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