The genocide trial against Saddam Hussein and six other co-defendants has resumed with the first witness giving testimony on the impact of Operation Anfal in northern Iraq.

The first witness on Tuesday morning told how his village of Balisan was bombed by chemical weapons.

"I saw eight to 12 jets ... There was greenish smoke from the bombs," Ali Mostafa Hama told the court. "It was 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 infant 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.

'Not guilty'

Earlier two of the co-defendants addressed the court and insisted Anfal was targeted at Iranian troops and allied Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq at a time when Iraq and Iran were locked in a bloody war.

Saddam and six other co-defendants are charged with genocide over the campaign, in which troops swept across parts of northern Iraq, destroying villages and killing tens of thousands of Kurds.

Sultan Hashim al-Tai, who was the commander of Task Force Anfal and head of the Iraqi Army 1st Corps, said: "The goal was to fight an organised, armed army ... the goal was not civilians".

He said civilians in the areas where Anfal took place were "safely transported" to other areas, including the northern city of Kirkuk.

The orders in the campaign were "to prevent the Iranian army from occupying Iraq at whatever price," al-Tai said.

"I implemented them precisely and sincerely without adding anything or exceeding my powers." "I never turned a blind eye to any violation," said al-Tai, who later served as Saddam's last defense minister, up until the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that toppled the regime.

Sabir al-Douri, the director of Military Intelligence at the time of Anfal, said: "the Iranian army and Kurdish rebels were fighting together" against the Iraqi army and that Anfal aimed to clear northern Iraq of Iranian troops.

He insisted the Iraqi government faced a "tough situation" and had to act because the area where the Iranian-allied guerrillas were located had dams that, if destroyed, would flood Baghdad.

He said civilians in the Anfal region had already been removed.

"You will see that we are not guilty and that we defended our country honorably and sincerely," al-Douri said.

Testimonies

Saddam and his co-accused are charged with overseeing the death of 182,000 Kurds throughout the Anfal campaign.

If convicted they face the death penalty.

The chief prosecutor of the Iraqi High Tribunal has said 1,175 victims' testimonies had been recorded with "65 to 75" expected to be called to testify.

On Monday, Saddam defiantly refused to enter a plea when accused of masterminding the Anfal campaign.
  
The defense is expected to argue that Anfal was a legitimate counter-insurgency operation against Kurdish separatist guerrillas who sympathized with the Iranian side in the Iran-Iraq war from 1980-1988.
  
Saddam's defense counsel also challenged the legitimacy of a  court set up under US tutelage, but Abdallah al-Ameri, the chief judge, and his four fellow judges dismissed his argument.

Saddam has already been tried on charges that he ordered the execution of 148 Shia civilians from the town of Dujail after a failed assassination attempt against him in 1982.
 
The verdict from that trial is due on October 16.

Photo Caption

Saddam Hussein