Genocide Charges Against Saddam

The Iraqi High Tribunal has announced that Saddam Hussein and six others have been charged with genocide in connection with Operation Anfal, a three-phase attack on the Kurds in northern Iraq in the late 1980s during the war with Iran. Saddam’s co-defendants in the Operation Anfal case include Ali Hassan Majid, better known as “Chemical Ali”; former Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad; former intelligence chief Saber Abdul Aziz al-Douri; former Republican Guard commander Hussein al-Tirkiti; former Nineveh provincial Gov. Taher Tafwiq al-Ani; and former top military commander Farhan Mutlaq al-Jubouri.

Operation Anfal included the gas attack on Halabja that killed 5,000 people in a single day, many of them women and children, although that attack is not part of the new charges against Saddam. Here is an eyewitness description of the gassing:

On 16 March 1988, Saddam Hussein’s forces dropped mustard gas, nerve agents and other chemical weapons on the mainly Kurdish town of Halabja.

Dana Nazif’s mother and four-year-old sister were among the 5,000 people who died in a single day in what was the worst ever chemical attack on a civilian population.

Just a teenager, Dana fled to Iran three days after the attack, the effects of which are still being felt in Halabja where the population suffers high rates of cancers, miscarriages and genetic abnormalities.

“I was 15 years old when the attack happened. There had been shelling for three days so the schools were closed.

“I fell unconscious when the bombardment started.

“Most people were in shelters and underground bunkers. When they realised it was a chemical attack they tried to get out, but most of them died in their shelters.

“A bomb fell here – in this small area, between 250 and 300 people died. In my own family my mother, brother and two of my sisters died. In all, I lost 35 relatives.

The evidence against Saddam and the others in the Operation Anfal case appears, at first blush, to be very strong. In December, a Dutch court sentenced Frans van Anraat, a chemicals dealer, to 15 years in prison for selling a key component of the mustard gas Saddam used during Operation Anfal:

Van Anraat, dubbed “Chemical Frans”, did not deny supplying the chemicals, but says he did not know what they were to be used for.

In a 2003 interview with Dutch television program Netwerk, van Anraat said: “This was not my main business, this was something I did in passing,” the Associated Press news agency quoted him as saying.

“Somewhere once back then, I got the request whether I could deliver certain products to them, which they needed,” he said.

“And because I had a very good relationship with the [Iraqi] oil ministry, and that’s where the request came from, I tried to see if I could do it. And that was successful and we did deliver some materials.”

However, prosecutors alleged that van Anraat was aware of the final purpose for the materials he supplied.

“From different sources it can be deduced that the suspect was aware of the destination and the final purpose for the base materials supplied by him,” the prosecutor’s office told the AFP news agency.

Among the chemicals van Anraat was accused of supplying was thiodiglycol, a chemical solvent used in the textile industry and in the manufacture of mustard gas.

He was found guilty of arranging 36 shipments – a total of 538 tons – from the US via the Belgian port of Antwerp, through Aqaba in Jordan to Iraq.

Saddam and Ali Hassan Majid were named as co-conspirators in the Dutch case, even though they were beyond the court’s jurisdiction. During trial, the prosecution produced damning evidence against the two men:

One document was a government decree said to have been signed by Saddam on June 20, 1987, ordering “special artillery bombs to kill as many people as possible” in the Kurdish area. Special artillery, Dutch prosecutors said, meant chemical weapons.

“Chemical Ali” was heard in an April 21, 1988, audio clip ordering that people caught in Kurdish areas “have to be destroyed … must have their heads shot off.” In another radio fragment, he said: “I will attack them with chemical weapons and kill them all.”

It remains an open question, of course, whether Saddam will ever stand trial for Operation Anfal. If Saddam is convicted and sentenced to death in the Dujail case, as he almost certainly will be, the sentence will have to be carried out, according to Article 27 of the IHT Statute, “within 30 days of the date when the judgment becomes final and non-appealable.” How long such an appeal would take is unknown, but it’s unlikely that it would take long enough for another trial to be held. And I can’t help but wonder if Saddam might not appeal at all, given that the odds of a reversal would be vanishingly small. He may well prefer martyrdom now, before the evidence of his worst crimes has been presented in open court for the world — and the Iraqi people — to see.

The tension between Article 27 and the Iraqi government’s evident desire to see Saddam tried multiple times is likely to come to a head with the Operation Anfal case. Jalal Talabani, the President of Iraq, told the press that all of the charges against Saddam will be heard before any sentence is carried out. But that claim is contradicted by the chief prosecutor in the Dujail case, Ja’afar Moussawi, who insists — with the IHT Statute on his side — that “[o]nce one of the accused on the Dujail case… has been sentenced to death, then he won’t be tried on other charges. Other charges will automatically be dropped against that particular defendant, even if the case itself is brought against others.”

UPDATE: According to the New York Times, only Saddam and Majid have been charged with genocide. The other men (as well as Saddam and Majid) are charged with various war crimes and crimes against humanity.