Graves evidence at Saddam trial

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An American forensic expert has given evidence in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial, showing images of mass graves of Iraqi Kurds killed in 1988.

Dr Clyde Snow told a court how experts had exhumed 27 bodies in the northern Iraqi town of Koreme in 1992.

He is the first expert witness to be presented by the prosecution.

The deposed leader and six others are on trial for their role in a campaign against the Kurds in the 1980s in which over 180,000 are alleged to have died.

The former leader has already been found guilty of crimes against humanity for the killing of 148 people in the mainly Shia town of Dujail following an assassination attempt on him in 1982.

He was sentenced to death by hanging on 5 November, but under Iraqi law the guilty verdict is automatically sent to the appeal court.

It is not clear if the Iraqi authorities will wait until the second trial is complete before they carry out the sentence in the first case.

Gunshot wounds

Dr Snow said he travelled to Koreme in 1992 as part of a team of physicians. He told the court that 27 men and boys were killed by Iraqi forces there.

Dr Snow presented a slideshow to the court of the bodies he and his colleagues had exhumed, detailing more than 80 gunshot wounds to the victims' heads and upper bodies.

The BBC's Andy Gallacher in Baghdad says the photographs showed skeletons laying in the earth, some with prayer beads or traditional Kurdish belts around them.

Saddam Hussein and his six co-defendants have pleaded innocent to charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

They are accused of being behind Operation Anfal - a 1987-1988 campaign against the Kurds, in which 180,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed.

Saddam Hussein and his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, also face charges of genocide.