Saddam trial told of horror in Room 63 By Michael Georgy and Paul Tait
Mon Dec 5, 3:12 PM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Men and women were tortured for days and babies
left to die in an interrogation facility which featured a meat grinder
for human flesh, the first prosecution witness to face     Saddam
Hussein told the court on Monday.

After weeks of delay and legal arguments over security and the
legitimacy of the court, the trial of Saddam and seven co- defendants
on charges of crimes against humanity heard confusing but graphic
witness evidence of torture and summary execution.

"I swear by God I walked by a room and on my left I saw a grinder with
blood coming out of it and human hair underneath," said 38-year-old
Ahmed Hassan, who said he had been kept in room 63 at the Hakmiya
intelligence headquarters in Baghdad.

Hassan, the first witness to face Saddam in court, said he was 15 when
Saddam visited the village in July 1982 and Shi'ite militants tried to
assassinate him.

Speaking technically as an individual plaintiff alongside the state,
which is pressing charges of crimes against humanity, Hassan said he
and his family were among hundreds of people rounded up in a security
operation run by Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti after an attempt on Saddam's
life in the village.

Barzan, one of Saddam's three younger half-brothers and the former head
of the feared Mukhabarat intelligence service, is one of Saddam's seven
co-accused in the case relating to the killings of 148 mostly Shi'ite
Muslim men from Dujail.

"Barzan was present. He had red cowboy boots and blue jeans and a
sniper rifle," Hassan, a stockily built worker with a round face and a
graying beard, told the heavily fortified court in central Baghdad.

He said Saddam, from the Sunni Arab minority, asked a 15-year-old boy
if he knew who he was. "He said 'Saddam'. Then Saddam hit him in the
head with an ash tray," Hassan said.

Hassan risked reprisals by letting his face appear on television as he
gave evidence.

Toward the end of his testimony he stood facing Saddam as the former
president challenged his testimony. Hassan held Saddam's gaze as Saddam
asked how he could possibly remember the names and birth dates of
people he said were killed, responding that he had memorized them as
they were read out by guards.

With Barzan constantly interjecting from the dock and calling the
testimony lies, Hassan said he was among hundreds of people taken from
the Shi'ite village to the Hakmiya intelligence headquarters, run by
Barzan.

He said it was while he was climbing the stairs there that he saw the
meat grinder. "No one escaped torture," he said.

"They would put a mask on my eyes and because I was young it would fall
down. I saw women being tortured," he said.

"My brother was given electric shocks while my 77-year-old father
watched," Hassan said. "They told us, 'why don't you confess, you will
be executed anyway'," he said.

"One man was shot in the leg with two bullets... Some people were
crippled because they had their arms and legs broken."

He said they were held in Hakmiya for 70 days. While they were there a
woman told a guard that her infant baby needed milk or he would die.

"He died and the guard threw him from the window," Hassan told the
court. "Pregnant women gave birth in the prison. Their babies died."

Saddam and his co-defendants have all pleaded not guilty to the
charges. They could be sentenced to death if found guilty.