Accounts differ, but not much
In 1979 he conducted one of the most horrifying bits of political puppetry ever recorded on videotape. After years as the power behind the throne in Baghdad, he had seized the top slot for himself. Then he convened a congress of the Baath Party to reveal what he said was a plot against the regime. A terrified aide to the former president stood for hours in front of the Baathist delegates recounting details of his own supposed crimes. Occasionally, plaintively, he turned to Saddam, who sat behind a table onstage, handsome as Dracula in a bespoke business suit, smoking a Churchill cigar and sipping from a glass of water. “Was that right?” the accused would ask. Saddam would nod, or correct him. The recitation continued.
Every time the confessor named someone in the audience as a fellow conspirator, that man was forced to stand up and leave the hall, to be shot outside. More than a dozen were named, and no one knew who might be next. Even in the front row, where Tariq Aziz was taking notes flanked by other men who had risen to the top with Saddam (and sit in the dock with him now) it was hard to tell whether some of them were wiping away sweat or tears. Then the repentant plotter was led off stage to be killed and Saddam got up to speak. The remaining delegates at that 1979 conference went wild, shouting Saddam’s praises, cheering, thinking they had been spared. But no. Saddam reached into the pocket of his suit and pulled out a list of more names. He called them out one by one, and they were led away, too, to be killed. - Christopher Dickey, Newsweek, January 5, 2006
It is one of the most chilling sequences ever filmed.
He sits smoking a cigar on a dais, while a roomful of terrified central committee members listens to a broken man working his way through an abject confession.
As the man begins to name names, guards appear and escort them white-faced from the room. Saddam continues to puff away until nearly half his audience has been dragged off.
The next sequence, which hasn't ever been televised, apparently shows what we know did happen: the survivors were then given pistols and compelled to shoot their former comrades. - Christopher Hitchens, The Mirror, July 2, 2004
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