Saddam trial hears of abuse as blasts kill 36

BAGHDAD - The first woman witness at Saddam Hussein's trial told of abuse and torture today and 36 Iraqi police officers and cadets died in the latest suicide attack of the insurgency that followed his overthrow.

A US security consultant became the seventh Westerner to be kidnapped in 10 days. His captors said in a tape aired by Al Jazeera television he would be killed in 48 hours unless Washington freed all the thousands of Iraqis held in prison.

The Interior Ministry said that apart from the 36 killed, more than 70 were wounded when two suicide bombers wearing explosives-packed vests attacked the Baghdad Police Academy.

Al Qaeda in Iraq said in an internet statement "two brothers" had carried out the attack, the bloodiest in three weeks, on a police force it said was persecuting Sunni Arabs.

At Saddam's trial in his former presidential palace in Baghdad, a woman identified only as "Witness A" and speaking from behind a curtain in fear for her life, said she had been beaten with cables after Saddam's guards forced her to strip.

She told how she had envied animals their freedom while she was held with hundreds of others rounded up after an attempt on Saddam's life in the Shi'ite village of Dujail in 1982.

"I was forced to take my clothes off. They lifted my legs up, they tied my hands, they beat me with cables and (gave me) electric shocks," she said.

Saddam, accused of crimes against humanity and facing possible execution, sat largely impassively through her testimony after a stormy session on Monday when he argued with judges and upbraided lawyers and witnesses.

TEMPER FRAYS

"Good morning to all those who respect the law," a defiant Saddam said as he entered the court with his seven co-accused.

But he later he thumped his hand on the dock holding him and raged against the "theatre" of what he has called a "Made in America" trial and "Zionists" who he said want to kill him.

"I have been sentenced to execution three times. This is not the first time," he said, recalling how a court sentenced him in absentia for attempting to kill Iraq's then president in 1959.

Saddam and his co-defendants are charged with crimes against humanity in relation to the deaths of 148 men in Dujail.

The trial has rekindled painful memories for many Iraqis barely more than a week before they vote for their first full-term parliament since Saddam's downfall.

Many in the Shi'ite majority and among ethnic Kurds, oppressed by Saddam's Sunni Arab-dominated regime, see the widely televised trial as a chance for vengeance.

Some Sunnis however feel threatened by a Shi'ite-led government and share Saddam's contention that the case is nothing more than a U.S-orchestrated show trial.

Iraqi Vice-President Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni Muslim, said sectarianism and foreign intervention were stumbling blocks on the path to a government of national unity.

"The problem is in the leaders and foreign intervention, whether it is international or regional," Yawar told an Arab media forum in Dubai on Tuesday.

LUNCH-HOUR BLASTS

The US military, which originally said the attack on the Baghdad police academy had been carried out by two women, put the death toll at 27 police officers and students.

Witnesses said the first attacker blew himself up as students were heading for lunch after shooting practice. Police trainee Nizal Mahmoud Khalaf said the second struck as students and police fled to a bunker for shelter.

The blasts were the worst suicide attacks since two bombers killed at least 74 people and reduced two crowded Shi'ite mosques to rubble during Friday prayers in the northeast Iraqi town of Khanaqin on November 18.

Iraqi security forces, less well armed and protected than their US counterparts, are frequently targeted by insurgents.

The grainy video of the latest hostage aired on Al Jazeera featured the logo of the Islamic Army in Iraq and showed a blond, Western-looking man sitting with his hands tied behind his back. It also showed an American passport and an Arabic identity card bearing the name Ronald Schulz.

Al Jazeera said the man worked as a security consultant for the Iraqi housing ministry but added it could not verify the authenticity of the tape.

There had been a lull in the taking of Western hostages in Iraq but seven are now being held, ratcheting up security fears among Westerners to levels not seen since last year.

Thousands of civilians have been kidnapped in Iraq since the fall of Saddam, including more than 200 foreigners, some by criminal gangs but others by insurgents who have used them to pressure their governments to withdraw their armies from Iraq.

- REUTERS