28 january 2006

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein's cousin told a court trying him for genocide on Sunday he had ordered Kurdish villages cleared in the 1988 "Anfal" campaign but insisted he was right to do so and had nothing to apologize for.

Ali Hassan al-Majeed, known as "Chemical Ali," is on trial with five other former senior Baath party officials for their roles in the 1988 Anfal (Spoils of War) military campaign.

Earlier this month he told the court he ordered troops to execute those who ignored government orders to leave villages, and on Sunday he reiterated that he was the one responsible for giving orders to destroy villages and displace their people.

He argued, however, that it was a legitimate military campaign since Kurdish guerrillas in northern Kurdistan had sided with Iran during the last stage of the Iraq-Iran war.

"All the orders given to relocate people were my decisions," Majeed told the court after prosecutors presented more than 20 documents detailing villages that were destroyed and people who were forced from their homes, sometimes with children as young as nine separated from their families.

"The orders were given as the region was full of Iranian agents. We had to isolate these saboteurs. We know that Iran had taken a lot of our land ... almost more than the size of Lebanon," Majeed said.

Majeed is considered the main enforcer of a campaign in which prosecutors say 180,000 people were killed, many of them gassed. Saddam Hussein, who had been on trial too, was executed at the end of December after being convicted in another trial.

During Anfal, thousands of villages declared "prohibited areas" were razed and bombed as part of a scorched-earth campaign. Thousands of villagers were forced to flee.

Majeed did not directly answer a question from the judge on why some of the Anfal attacks were reported after a ceasefire between Iran and Iraq on August 8, 1988.

"We had to be very careful with Iranians. You know historically what they have done with Iraq," he said.

"I am not defending myself," he added. "I am not apologizing. I did not make (any) mistake."