Prosecutor in Saddam trial says has damning tape

BAGHDAD, Nov 26 (Reuters) The chief prosecutor in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial said today he has an audio tape and documents proving the former Iraqi leader personally ordered the gassing of ethnic Kurds in northern Iraq in the 1980s.

Saddam and six former commanders return to court on Monday over the 1988 Anfal -- Spoils of War -- military campaign against Kurds that prosecutors say killed some 180,000 people. The operation included the widespread use of chemical weapons.

The defendants include Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majeed, known as ''Chemical Ali''. They have justified Anfal as a legitimate military operation against Kurdish militias who sided with Iraq's Iranian enemies during the 1980-1988 war.

Chief prosecutor Munkith al-Faroon said he had audio tapes of Baghdad meetings between Saddam and senior officials of his Baath party in northern Iraq. In one, he tells them they should use such arms only with his authority: ''The use of chemical weapons against Kurds is by his hand only,'' Faroon said.

''The prosecution will present the tapes to the court which will review them and decide whether they should be admitted as evidence,'' he told Reuters in an interview.

SIGNED DOCUMENTS Faroon said the prosecution also had documents signed by Saddam and issued by his office in which he ordered the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds during Anfal.

The documents and audio tapes will be key to the prosecution's case in proving Saddam's criminal responsibility. Human rights watchdogs have said the prosecution failed to do this in Saddam's first trial in which he was sentenced to death.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said the prosecution case in that trial ''suffered from important gaps in terms of the kinds of evidence necessary to prove intent, knowledge and criminal responsibility'' on the part of the defendants.

Saddam was found guilty three weeks ago of crimes against humanity for ordering hundreds of Shi'ites killed or tortured in the town of Dujail after an attempt on his life there in 1982.

The Anfal trial, which will hear more witnesses from the 1,175 plaintiffs on Monday, has already heard numerous accounts of how Iraqi jets bombed Kurdish villages along the Iranian border with chemical weapons. The renowned case of the gassing of the town of Halabja in 1988 forms the basis of another case.

Faroon said he and other court officials just returned from visiting several of the villages where they had found unexploded rockets and handed them over to chemical experts for analysis.

REUTERS KR RAI2249