The chief judge dismissed two former Saddam Hussein aides from the courtroom for unruly behaviour on Wednesday on the second day of a trial over the brutal crushing of a 1991 rebellion by Shiite Muslims. The order came as a 76-year-old former Shiite lawmaker testified that he was falsely imprisoned for months in the aftermath of the uprising and described fellow inmates being carried back to jail in blankets after hours of torture rendered them unable to walk. “I was later released because of the presidential pardon, but my life was already destroyed. I was dismissed from the parliament. My cotton was destroyed by the army shelling and my house was damaged”, Kamil Kanoun Abu al-Heil recalled. Al-Heil denied that he was part of the uprising, pointing out that he was a member of Saddam’s rubber-stamp parliament. “I was part of the regime. No way I could have participated in the uprising”, he said.
In the middle of Wednesday’s session, chief judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa ordered former Republican Guards commander Maj Gen. Iyad Fathi al-Rawi - who led the 1988 offensives at the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war - to leave the courtroom “for not sticking to the rules of the court”.