An Iraqi Kurd told Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial on Wednesday she was horribly burned and lost three children after aircraft bombed her mountain village with chemical weapons. “I lost my sight. My children lost their sight ... My house was razed to the ground. May God blind them all,” said Adiba Owla Bayez, pointing at the former Iraqi president and his six co-defendants on the third day of their trial. Describing a spring evening in 1987, the 45-year-old mother of five said aircraft dropped bombs behind her house and she had immediately noticed a difference from previous attacks. “We smelt a peculiar smell. It was rotten apple ... My daughter Nargis said she had pain in the stomach and in her eyes. She was vomiting. All my children were vomiting. I too felt like that and started vomiting,” said Bayez.
The testimony echoed the recollections of two other witnesses of events on April 16, 1987, nearly a year before the formal launch of the Anfal - Spoils of War - campaign in the Balisan valley, north of Sulaimaniya. Bayez, the wife of the trial’s first witness, Ali Mustafa Hama, said she suffered two miscarriages and had an infant die at the age of three months following the attack. Saddam and his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, are charged with genocide over the seven-month operation. Majid earned his nickname “Chemical Ali” after poison gas attacks in the north. The other defendants, who argue the attacks were legitimate military strikes against Iraqi Kurds fighting with Iran against the regime in Baghdad, are charged with war crimes. Both charges carry a maximum penalty of death by hanging.