Witnesses in Hussein Trial to Testify to 40 Chemical Attacks on Kurds, State Department Says

By Jon Fox
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Prosecutors in the second trial of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein expect witnesses to testify that his regime used chemical weapons against 40 Kurdish villages during the Anfal campaign, a senior State Department official said yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 21).

Hussein and his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid face charges of genocide for what prosecutors say was their role in eight military campaigns directed against Kurdish villages in northern Iraq between February and August 1988, according to the official.

Estimates on the number of deaths vary.  Some are as high as 182,000 Kurds, while Human Rights Watch puts the number between 50,000 and 100,000.

The attacks came at the tail end of the bloody eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, and defendants today argued in Baghdad that the campaign targeted Kurdish rebels aligned with Tehran.

A lengthy Human Rights Watch report issued in 1994, however, contends the attacks stemmed from a “deliberate intent on the part of President Saddam Hussein to destroy through mass murder part of Iraq’s Kurdish minority.”  The prosecution expects to describe a systematic targeting of the ethnically distinct Kurdish community in northern Iraq, the State Department official said at a briefing given under the condition of anonymity.

Between 2,000 and 4,000 villages were completely destroyed, the official said.  In the majority of cases, the Iraqi military villages isolated Kurdish villages and separated the women and children from the men.  Iraqi forces then executed the male villagers between 16 and 25 years old and disposed of the bodies in mass graves, the official said.

Hussein and al-Majid are the only defendants in the trial to be charged with genocide in addition to war crimes and crimes against humanity.  The five other co-defendants, primarily military officials, face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Al-Majid controlled military operations in the north and became known as “Chemical Ali” for his alleged use of chemical weapons during the Anfal campaign.

During the trial, the official said testimony would establish that the Iraqi military attacked 40 villages with either mustard or nerve agents.  The chemical weapons were used both to kill villagers and to drive them from their homes to be rounded up by Iraqi intelligence units and Ba’ath Party organizations, according to the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.

Analysis of soil samples revealed that at least one of the agents used was sarin, said Nehal Bhuta, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch.  Sarin, a chemical roughly 500 times more toxic than cyanide, can kill a human in less than a minute as it destroys the nervous system.

It was discovered in the 1930s but had never been used in warfare until employed by Iraqi forces, said Amy Smithson, a chemical weapons expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  The chemical was originally discovered during research to develop a better way to kill cockroaches, she said.

The Aum Shinrikyo cult used sarin in a 1995 attack on the Tokyo subway system killing 12 and injuring thousands (see GSN, Aug. 18)

Mustard gas, an agent that causes skin to blister, was used widely in World War I and again during the Iran-Iraq war.

The March 1988 gas attack on the town of Halabja, which is estimated to have killed as many as 5,000 people using both sarin and mustard, will not be included in the current trial.  That attack is to be considered separately as one of the roughly 14 cases against Hussein-regime leaders expected to go before the Iraqi High Tribunal.

The senior State Department official was unable to say why the Halabja attack was not included in the Anfal case, but Bhuta of Human Rights Watch said he believes it was separated due to the “singularly large number of victims killed by gas.”

That attack came after Kurdish militias believed to be backed by Iranian forces captured the town.  It is not considered part of the Anfal campaign.

The Anfal trial is the second case against Hussein to come before the High Tribunal.  Hussein and seven co-defendants were previously tried for atrocities allegedly committed against Iraqi Shiites in the town of Dujail following an attempt on Hussein life in 1982.

All the defendants in that trial face execution by hanging if convicted.  A verdict in that case is expected on Oct. 16.

According to Iraqi law, a death sentence must be carried out within 30 days of the end of the final appeal in a case.  It remains unclear how a guilty verdict in that case would affect the ongoing Anfal trial, the State Department official said.

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