Saddam undergoes surgery
Investigators find mass grave in northern Iraq with the remains of hundreds of women and children killed under the former dictator's regime.
Baghdad (AsiaNews/Agencies) Iraqi sources close to the Human Rights Ministry reported that Saddam Hussein underwent a hernia operation. The operation took place about 10 days ago at Ibn Sina hospital inside the US-controlled Green Zone and lasted about an hour. Saddam was returned to his cell the same day.
In northern Iraq, inspectors searching for proof of Saddam's crimes found a mass grave in Hatra, a village south of Mosul. It contains the remains of hundreds of Kurds killed during the repression of the 1980s, including women and children. In fact, one trench contains only women and children whilst another contains only men.
"It is my personal opinion that this is a killing field," Greg Kehoe, an American working with the Iraqi Special Tribunal said. "I've been doing grave sites for a long time, but I've never seen anything like this, women and children executed for no apparent reason," he added.
Kehoe has been travelling around Iraq searching for mass graves containing the estimated 300,000 people thought to have been killed by former regime. So far, Iraq's Human Rights Ministry has identified 40 possible mass graves across the country.
Saddam Hussein, who has been in US custody since December 13 and who has appeared in court in July for his trail's preliminary hearing, has been experiencing several health problems in prison such as high blood pressure, a chronic prostate infection and a hernia, this according to Iraq's Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin. Doctors treating him have also had several tests performed on him to make sure he had nothing more serious such as cancer. (DS)
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04/01/2005
