BAGHDAD - A Kurdish woman testified Tuesday in the genocide trial of Saddam Hussein, breaking down in tears as she described how foul smoke billowed across her village in a 1987 poison gas attack and how her male relatives disappeared at a prison camp.
Najiba Khider Ahmed was one of two survivors who took the stand in the second day of Hussein's new trial over the Anfal campaign, a military sweep across northern Iraq in which tens of thousands of Kurds were killed and hundreds of villages leveled.
As the prosecution began to set up its case with brutal accounts of children dying in gas attacks and men dragged away never to be seen again, a defense strategy began to emerge.
Hussein and his lawyers repeatedly accused the survivors of being coached in their testimony. At the same time, two of his six co-defendants insisted that Anfal did not target civilians but aimed only to wipe out Kurdish guerrillas they said were helping Iran as the two countries waged war in the 1980s.
If convicted, Hussein and his co-defendants could face death by hanging. The ousted leader also is awaiting a verdict Oct. 16 in the first case against him - the nine-month trial over the killings of 148 Shiites in a 1980s crackdown on the town of Dujail. In that case as well, he and seven other co-defendants could face the death penalty.
Ahmed and fellow Anfal survivor Ali Mostafa Hama described the April 16, 1987, bombardment of Sheik Wasan and the nearby village of Basilan, believed to be the first time Hussein's regime used chemical weapons against Iraqi citizens. After the assault, residents were rounded up into prison camps, and most of the men taken away on trucks and later executed, they said.
"I saw eight to 12 jets ... there was greenish smoke from the bombs," Hama said. "It was as if there was a rotten apple or garlic smell minutes later. People were vomiting. ... We were blind and screaming. There was no one to rescue us. Just God."
Hama, wearing a traditional Kurdish headdress, said he saw a newborn baby die during the bombardment.
"The infant was trying to smell life, but he breathed in the chemicals and died," he said, speaking in Kurdish with an Arabic translator.
Ahmed and Hama were testifying as plaintiffs in the case. The trial was adjourned until today, when more plaintiffs will be heard.
Hussein and his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, a Baath Party leader who allegedly organized Anfal, are charged with genocide - widely considered the toughest charge to prove since it requires showing their intention was to exterminate part of an ethnic group.
Hussein and al-Majid also face charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes, as do their co-defendants, most of whom are former military figures.
The Anfal trial is likely to take months. The campaign was on a far greater scale than the Dujail crackdown, with death toll estimates ranging from 50,000 to 180,000. Prosecutors plan to call up to 75 witnesses and to present extensive documents from the former regime, as well as evidence from mass graves.
