A Kurdish witness at Saddam Hussein's genocide trial told the court Wednesday that he survived a massacre by running and falling into a ditch full of bodies as troops fired on his group of detainees.
"It was really unbelievable, the number of people being killed like this. A detainee called Anwar speaking from behind a curtain to conceal his identity said he was in a group of detainees who thought they were being taken to another detention center during the military offensive that Saddam's army waged against the Kurds in northern Iraq in 1988.
"It was dark when they brought a group of people (prisoners) in front of the vehicle. The drivers got out of our vehicles and turned on the headlights." He said some prisoners tried to snatch an automatic rifle from one of their guards, but the prisoners failed to grab the gun because "we were so weak." According to the AP, he said soldiers opened fire, spraying the prisoners with bullets.
"I ran and fell into a ditch. It was full of bodies. I fell on a body. It was still alive. It was his last breath," he said. He was lightly wounded. He took off his clothes in the ditch, thinking he was more likely to blend into the color of the sand if he were naked. He then began running again.
"As I was running, I saw many pits, I saw many mounds, and I saw lots of people who had been shot," he said. "The desert was full of mounds that had people buried underneath."
One of Saddam's co-defendants, Ali Hassan al-Majid mocked the witness, accusing him of telling a "tale worthy of Hollywood."
