Saddam's cousin says has nothing to apologise for

BAGHDAD, Jan 24 (Reuters) Saddam Hussein's cousin today said he had nothing to apologise for after prosecutors in his genocide trial presented memos they said implicated him in the killing of ethnic Kurds.

Prosecutors presented intelligence documents they said detailed orders Ali Hassan al-Majeed gave to raze villages, detain families and carry out summary executions.

Majeed is on trial with five other former senior Baath party officials for their roles in the 1988 Anfal (Spoils of War) campaign. Charges against Saddam himself lapsed when he was executed at the end of December.

Majeed, known as Chemical Ali for his alleged use of chemical weapons, has already said he ordered troops to execute all Kurds who ignored orders to leave their villages.

Among more than 20 intelligence agency memos presented in court today was one reporting that the entire family of a Kurdish fighter named Taha Ahmed had been killed in the aerial bombardment of a Kurdish village.

''With all these documents in the case, I would ask the Iraqi people for forgiveness if it was me,'' chief prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon told the court.

''I didn't do anything wrong to apologise for,'' Majeed replied. ''If I did anything wrong to any Iraqi, I swear to God I would apologise to him with pleasure.'' During Anfal, thousands of villages declared ''prohibited areas'' were razed and bombed as part of a scorched-earth campaign. Thousands of villagers were deported, many executed.

Majeed, considered the main enforcer of the campaign, faces a possible death sentence.

The defendants have said Anfal had legitimate military targets -- Kurdish guerrillas who had sided with Iran during the last stage of the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war.

The next hearing was set for Jan. 28.

A court tomorrow due to review the life sentence imposed on one of Saddam's co-accused, former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, in an earlier trial after an appeals court recommended that the sentence be increased to death.

REUTERS SI RK2150