Are Iraqi Hospitals Hunting Grounds?

In a makeshift Baghdad clinic, all of the patients are Sunnis. The patients say they are too frightened to go to hospitals run by the Ministry of Health because those have been infested by Shiite death squads, reports CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey.

Such is the fear, that even Sunni doctors don't want to be identified.

"I've seen many doctors targeted and killed just because they were Sunnis," says Dr. Ahmed "so I resigned from the hospital and came here."

In an unprecedented prosecution, two senior health ministry officials, both Shiites, stand accused of using hospitals to systematically kidnap and kill hundreds of Sunnis.

American legal advisers say the importance of the trial cannot be overstated.

"This is the first time senior government officials are going to be facing trial, potentially facing trial, for having used the power of their office against the Sunni minority," said Col. Mark Martins, the senior military lawyer in Iraq.

The charge sheet will accuse a former deputy Health Minister and his security chief of turning hospitals into hunting grounds. Ambulances were used to transport weapons, morgue workers were pressured to falsify death certificates and cover up executions and Sunni patients were dragged from hospital beds and murdered.

"There are chilling accounts of savage beatings of Sunnis in the basement of the Ministry of Health headquarters, and Hakim actually ordering their killing," said Martins.

The trial will be held in the high security "Rule of Law Complex" built by the American military with $49 million of Iraqi money. At least half a dozen witnesses have been offered U.S. visas to guarantee their safety, and both the Iraqi judge and American advisers are pushing to get this case to court.

Under Iraqi law the health minister must approve the prosecution -- a test of whether the Shiite-dominated government is willing to protect Sunnis by punishing sectarian-based killing.