BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A Kurdish villager testified Tuesday that he fled an attack by Saddam Hussein's forces 18 years ago, leaving behind his mother and two sisters. Years later, their identity cards were discovered in a mass grave, he said.
"Congratulations! you are in a cage, Saddam," witness Ghafour Hassan Abdullah said as he stared at the ousted president. [...]Hussein listened silently to the witness. But he lost his temper when one of the lawyers described Kurdish guerrillas, known here as peshmargas, as freedom fighters.
"You are agents of Iran and Zionism. We will crush your heads," Hussein shouted.
Before the judge cut off his microphone, Hussein demanded that the word peshmarga, Kurdish for sacrifice, be stricken from the trial record. He said the Kurdish guerrillas were rebels and "in any country in the world where there is rebellion, the authorities ask the army to defeat it."
No real jokes here except... "we will crush your heads"? What an unusual yet highly specific threat... like he'd been sitting there for a while considering various types of torture and finally settled on this oddity as the specific punishment required. Ahhh, power... the drug that keeps on giving.
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