Saddam should be executed '20 times a day' for massacre

SADDAM Hussein deserves to be executed 20 times a day after confessing to ordering a campaign which claimed the lives of 180,000 Kurds, Iraq's president said yesterday.

Jalal Talabani said an investigating judge "was able to extract confessions from Saddam's mouth" about numerous executions he had allegedly personally ordered during his 24 years in power.

Among the events to which he claimed the former Iraqi leader had confessed was the Anfal campaign against the Kurds, which included the infamous gassing of the village of Halabja.

"Saddam Hussein is a war criminal and he deserves to be executed 20 times a day for his crimes against humanity," said Mr Talabani, who heads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party. He added that Saddam had tried to assassinate him at least 20 times.

His assertion was supported by an unnamed official of the Iraqi Special Tribunal investigating Saddam. The official said that the former leader had acknowledged ordering retribution against Kurds in the north of the country and boasted that the killings were legal and justified.

The official said Saddam made the statement last month during questioning in preparation for his trial, which is scheduled to begin on 19 October. He said Saddam demanded that a court decide if he was justified in ordering the so-called Anfal campaign in 1987-88, which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of numerous Kurdish communities in the north of Iraq.

But Abdel Haq Alani, a legal consultant to Saddam's family, expressed scepticism about the claim and accused Mr Talabani of trying to prejudice the trial. He said he was unaware of the confession, which came as a surprise.

"Let's not have a trial on TV. Let the court of law, not the media, make its ruling on this," he said.

"This is a matter for the judiciary to decide on, not for politicians, and Jalal should know better than that."

Despite the alleged confessions the only charge against Saddam so far announced relates to a reprisal attack on the Shiite town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, in 1982 following an attempt on the former leader's life. Seven other senior Baath Party officials also face charges for their alleged role in the ensuing massacre.

The 1991 suppression of Iraqi Shiites, another atrocity for which Saddam may face charges, occurred after the majority rose up after US-led forces drove the Iraqi army from Kuwait. Shiite leaders had hoped - wrongly - that the Americans would intervene on their behalf.

Saddam has been in US custody at an undisclosed site in Baghdad since his capture in December 2003, eight months after his regime was overthrown by US forces.