... because if this isn't the biggest load of manure you've ever seen then I've got some swampland beachfront property I'd like to sell you...
Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, on trial for alleged crimes against humanity including mass murder, today told a Baghdad court that U.S. soldiers beat and tortured him during his captivity.
"Yes, I've been beaten on every place of my body and the signs are all over my body," Hussein said, when asked by a prosecuting lawyer if he had been hurt in prison. "I have been hit by the Americans and tortured," he said in a broadcast being aired by international networks with a 20 to 30-minute delay. |
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! ...can't... ...stop... ...laughing... MUAHAHAHAHAHA!
Sorry, had to catch my breath there after laughing uncontrollably. Now, how about some real torture, like the torture Saddam doled out.
[...]Earlier a witness told the court that Saddam's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti ate grapes as he watched a torture session.
"They gave me electric shocks and I wished I were dead,'' said the witness, who spoke through a voice modulator and from behind a curtain to preserve his anonymity. "Barzan was there eating grapes and I was screaming,'' he said.
The unidentified witness was the second resident of Dujail to take the stand today. His testimony followed that of Ali Haj Hussein al-Haydari, who said he was kicked by al-Tikriti and that the former intelligence chief was present in a building where villagers were tortured and killed.
The witness said he was taken to the National Guard and Popular Army headquarters late one night, where he was asked to identify the bodies of two of his sons. He said he was tortured at the center for 17 days before being taken to Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. A year and two months later, he said he was transferred to a desert settlement. |
Electric shocks. Yeah that's torture. And nothing makes a torturer hungrier than elctroshocks. Now more of the defendents' claims of "torture."
[...]"He said he saw me with the interrogators: was it written on their foreheads that they were interrogators and how did he know me at that point?" al-Tikriti asked.
"Seventeen days is nothing compared to three years, I will be in prison for three years in April," al-Tikriti said. "For eight months I was in a room 2 meters by two meters. I only had pyjama pants, the shirt was burnt. I ate food that animals would not eat." |
What? No grapes for you to munch on?
[...]The witness, 37, said his house was raided the night of the botched murder bid, and that his family was taken in a convoy of Mercedes cars to the Baath party headquarters for what they were told would be a brief interrogation. They were later driven to Abu Ghraib prison before being exiled to the desert for a year, he said.
In addition to applying electric shocks to detainees, the guards also dripped hot plastic on to the bodies of prisoners, causing severe pain when the plastic solidified, al-Hayderi said.
"I cannot describe the torture we were subjected to," said al-Haydari, whose 43 relatives were among those tortured. Some were killed. "A man would leave on his feet and come back thrown in a blanket."
Hussein stroked his beard as he listened to the witness, occasionally putting on his black spectacles to write notes. The deposed dictator boycotted the previous session of the court, on Dec. 7, saying the trial was unjust and that he hadn't been able to change clothes in three days.
"The toilet was always overflowing because there were so many of us," al-Haydari said, adding that detainees were deprived of medication and that there was no formula for babies. He said his sister died shortly after being born.
"Over four years, no one ever questioned me," said al- Haydari, the most composed witness to date. "I never knew why I was arrested." |
Exiled to the desert, electroshocks, covered in hot plastic, multiple people in one cell, living in excrement, for four years, and starving... Hmm... sounds worse to me than Saddam's 6 by 6 and three squares a day.
Can we just have him executed already... |
