Saddam's officials charged in executions

BAGHDAD, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- Two dozen officials from Saddam Hussein's government went on trial for their roles in the deaths of thousands of Saddam's opponents in Iraq, officials said.

The roster of defendants charged Sunday in a Baghdad court includes Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, already sentenced to death in two previous trials, The New York Times reported Monday. Others, including Saddam's half-brothers Sabawi and Watban Ibrahim and the executed despot's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, face charges in other trials being heard by the same court.

Charges against the former leaders include organizing the deaths of as many as 250,000 members of the Islamic Dawa Party, which opposed Saddam's Baath Party, from 1968-2003.

"We want to present a vivid portrait of what the ruling Saddamist bunch perpetrated against the Iraqi people in Balad so that it becomes evident to Arabs everywhere, particularly those who still describe Saddam's ill-fated regime as pan-Arabist, populist and democratic," prosecutor Mahdi al-Haddo said in his opening statement.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, an American soldier was killed Sunday when a homemade bomb exploded, the U.S. military said in a statement.

Along the Iraq-Turkey border, Turkish warplanes bombed several sites that had been used by the Kurdish rebel group the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, a rebel spokesman told the Times. No casualties were reported.