Saddam Hussein and six of his aides were back in court yesterday, as his second trial continued.
The defence demanded that the court order an investigation into the ransacking of the defence offices, guarded by U.S. soldiers in the heavily fortified Green Zone, last month.
Badie Aref Izzat said:
"I demand to open investigation with the American authorities because the offices were guarded by U.S. soldiers.
I have received 1429 pieces of totally black papers."
The judge ordered that the prosecutors provide a new set of documents to the defence team.
Four witnesses took the stand to testify in the trial of operation Anfal (Spoils of War) military campaign, in which prosecutors said that up to 180,000 Kurds were killed.
Ayoub Abdellah Mohammad said that his village was bombed by chemical weapons on August 24 1988:
"The court can now scrutinize the village to see the remains of bombing, rockets and shrapnel."
Tawfeeq Abdul-Aziz Mustafa said that his village was bombed by chemical weapons, and that he and several villagers buried some badly charred bodies before they fled to neighboring Turkey.
A third female witness said that she lost her husband and her son along with 27 other relatives, and have not found them till now.
However, one of Saddam's codefendants, Sabir al-Douri, from military intelligence, said that Kurdish guerrillas were collaborating with the Iranians.
Judge Ureiybi adjourned the trial till November 27th, to give the defence time to assemble a list of witnesses.
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