IRAQ: Kurds call for revenge as Saddam faces his judges

Saddam Hussein refused to plead as he and six former army commanders went on trial in Baghdad on Monday (August 21) for the killing of tens of thousands of Kurdish villagers in northern Iraq in the 1980s. The start of the new trial, the second in which Saddam faces the death penalty, comes amid worsening sectarian violence between Saddam's fellow minority Sunnis and Shi'ites that has raised fears Iraq is sliding towards all-out civil war. "The defendant Saddam Hussein, the investigative judge has transferred you to this court so that you will be tried for three charges, genocidal crime, crime against humanity and war crime. Are you guilty or innocent?" said Chief Judge Abdullah Ali Aloosh. When asked to enter a plea, Saddam replied: "You already read the appeal and the person who is concerned will keep silent. It is my right to keep silent according to what you said. It needs a lot of books." Aloosh entered a not guilty plea on his behalf. One of Saddam's co-defendants is his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for allegedly ordering poison gas attacks on Kurds in northern Iraq. Looking frail and walking with a cane, he entered the courtroom last. Majid, wearing traditional Arab robes and red-chequered headdress, introduced himself as "first major general". Aloosh also entered an innocent plea for Majid after he told the court he would prefer to remain silent. The seven defendants, including Saddam's former defence minister, face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their role in Anfal, which chief prosecutor in the trial Munqith al-Faroon said had left 182,000 people dead or missing. Saddam and Majid face the additional, graver charge of genocide. All the main charges carry the death penalty. Iraqi forces are accused of using mustard gas and nerve agents in the campaign, launched after Saddam's government declared large rural areas of three predominantly Kurdish provinces prohibited areas. "These crimes that the human conscience witness are from the unique crimes in the modern history, concerning the victims, their ages, the way of killing and maiming them, the rape of women and make it easy for dogs to eat the bodies of the victims in the desert, using immoral and inhuman means to disconnect the Iraqi family," said chief tribunal prosecutor, Jaafar al-Moussawi. In the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, relatives of the Anfal victims attended an exhibition displaying artwork and a symposium addressing the genocide campaign in Anfal. Weeping relatives carried photos of their loved ones who were killed during the operation. In the northern city of Arbil, Kurds sat in cafes as the television broadcast images of Saddam facing his judges. Many Kurds said they had little patience for what was likely to be a long trial and wanted the toppled leader sent to the gallows right away. "We want a fair judge who can bring human rights back and we want him to exile or kill Saddam so that Saddam's name will be erased," said Taher Azwar Taher, a Kurdish citizen. "Saddam committed crimes and he should be punished and the court is the one who should decide the punishment," added another Kurdish citizen, Yushar Najemaddin. Saddam and his co-accused are likely to argue that their crackdown was justified because Kurdish rebels and their leaders had committed treason by forming alliances with arch-enemy Iran. A series of eight campaigns between February and August 1988 was aimed at driving Kurds from their homes into "collective villages" where Iraqi authorities could monitor them. Those who did not die in the military attacks were arrested, displaced, tortured or killed, prosecutors say. Faroon said the bodies of hundreds of Kurds killed in the campaign had been found in mass graves unearthed after U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam in 2003. Forensic evidence from the graves, several in southern Iraq far from the Kurdish areas, will form part of the trial, he said, adding that some bodies had been linked to Anfal by their Kurdish dress. Al-Moussawi, said elderly people, women and children had been deported to detention camps, "not because they committed crimes, but because they were Kurds". Judges are still considering their verdict in Saddam's first trial, which began in October 2005. In that case he is charged over the killing of 148 Shi'ite Muslim men following a 1982 assassination attempt on him in the town of Dujail. But the killings of three defence lawyers have prompted international rights monitors to voice concerns about Iraq's ability to hold fair trials amid the post-war chaos. The deaths of 5,000 people in the Kurdish town of Halabja in March 1988 form the basis of a separate trial to be held later.

ITN Source | August 22, 2006

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