Hussein charged with genocide

[cal04]

The Iraq tribunal Tuesday announced new criminal charges against Saddam Hussein and six others in 1980s crackdown against the Kurds, including the gassing of thousands of civilians in the village of Halabja. Investigative judge Raid Juhi said the charges against Hussein and the others had been filed with another judge, who will review the evidence and order a trial date. The move is tantamount to an indictment under the Iraqi legal system.

The case involves Hussein's role in Operation Anfal, a three-phase move against Kurds in northern Iraq in the late 1980s. Anfal included the March 16 gas attack against Halabja in which 5,000 people, including women and children died. Human rights groups consider the Halabja attack one of the gravest atrocities allegedly committed by Hussein's regime.

Hussein is currently on trial on charges related to the killing of Shiites in a crackdown launched in the town of Dujail in 1982. The Dujail trial is the first of around a dozen cases prosecutors intend to bring against Hussein and members of his inner circle in an attempt to bring an accounting for a 23-year regime that allegedly saw tens of thousands of its own people killed and imprisoned. Other cases include the alleged killing of members of political and religious parties, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the suppression of uprisings by Kurds and Shiites in 1991.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/04/04/hussein.trial.ap/index.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Interesting - Saddam will surely bring up the American reports

which say that the deaths in Halabja more likely occurred from Iranian weapons than Iraqi ones - though that doesn't mean he didn't use chemical wepaons elsewhere. Proving he was responsible 'beyond all reasonable doubt' would seem difficult - its that the standard required in these Iraqi courts?

[Bacchus39]

5. no sympathies here

he deserves to what he gets. not only the gassing but also the invasion of Iran and Kuwait.

[Bridget Burke]

11. His accomplices should also get what they deserve....

But they won't.

[Kagemusha]

6. The standard required is the govt says you're guilty.

Iraq is apparently one of the world's leading lights when it comes to show trials.

[LynnTheDem]

10. These reports?

The US State Department found both sides were using chemical weapons.

"There are indications that Iran may also have used chemical artillery shells in this fighting," spokesman Charles Redman told the press a week after the attack. "We call on Iran and Iraq to desist immediately from the use of any chemical weapons."
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0218/trilling.php

On May 3, 1990, referring to yet another study, "A Defense Department reconstruction of the final stages of the Iran-Iraq war has assembled what analysts say is conclusive intelligence that one of the worst civilian massacres of the war, in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Halabja, was caused by "repeated chemical bombardments from both belligerent armies." "
Washington Post (May 3, 1990)

The US government itself later confirmed the fact that both sides had used gas and that, in all likelihood, Iranian gas killed the Kurds.

A Pentagon report, ‘Iraqi Power and U.S. Security in the Middle East’ published in 1990 states (Chapter 5): “In March 1988, the Kurds at Halabjah were bombarded with chemical weapons, producing a great many deaths. Photographs of the Kurdish victims were widely disseminated in the international media. Iraq was blamed for the Halabjah attack, even though it was subsequently brought out that Iran too had used chemicals in this operation, and it seemed likely that it was the Iranian bombardment that had actually killed the Kurds.”

United Nations: No Proof Saddam Gassed the Kurds
http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/11-18-98.html

-The Pentagon's USAWC and US Marine Corps reports concluded Iran gassed the Kurds at Halbjah, not Iraq.

Lessons Learned: The Iran-Iraq War
by Dr. Stephen Pelletiere and Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Johnson
U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute

"The great majority of the victims seen by reporters and other
observers who attended the scene were blue in their extremities. That means that they were killed by a blood agent, probably either cyanogen chloride or hydrogen cyanide. Iraq never used and lacked any capacity to produce these chemicals. But the Iranians did deploy them. Therefore the Iranians killed the Kurds."

US Marine Corps document FMFRP 3

"Blood agents were allegedly responsible for the most infamous use of chemicals in the war—the killing of Kurds at Halabjah. Since the Iraqis have no history of using these two agents—and the Iranians do—we conclude that the Iranians perpetrated this attack."
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/3203 /

The DIA's report concluded Iran had gassed the Kurds & Iranians of Halabjah;

Immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas.

The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated
they had been killed with a blood agent - that is, a cyanide-based gas -which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.
http://truthout.org/docs_02/020303C.htm

The CIA's report mentions "hundreds" killed, not "5000" and against the Iranians primarily w Kurds caught in the cross-fire. This report is still on the US government website.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.htm

And the US having used banned chem weapons in Iraq last year.

[Jack Rabbit]

12. Those "reports" could be Reagan admin ass-covering

Remember, the reason we can prove Saddam had WMDs at one time is because we have the sales receipts.

[daleo]

14. I hope the evidence includes "where he got the weapons"

It will be interesting to see if they allow that line of questioning to be persued.

[CJCRANE]

2. This is political.

Bushco are on the ropes over Iraq, so now they pull out the trump card:

"Saddam killed more Iraqis than we did!"

Watch it get bogged down in bureaucracy and blunders just like the other trial.

[DELUSIONAL]

3. Bush needs to be charged with genocide

[darkmaestro019]

4. You beat me to it. I second that emotion. nt

[atomic-fly]

7. we overlooked it then....

Conclusion

The current Bush administration discusses Iraq in starkly moralistic terms to further its goal of persuading a skeptical world that a preemptive and premeditated attack on Iraq could and should be supported as a "just war." The documents included in this briefing book reflect the realpolitik that determined this country's policies during the years when Iraq was actually employing chemical weapons. Actual rather than rhetorical opposition to such use was evidently not perceived to serve U.S. interests; instead, the Reagan administration did not deviate from its determination that Iraq was to serve as the instrument to prevent an Iranian victory. Chemical warfare was viewed as a potentially embarrassing public relations problem that complicated efforts to provide assistance. The Iraqi government's repressive internal policies, though well known to the U.S. government at the time, did not figure at all in the presidential directives that established U.S. policy toward the Iran-Iraq war. The U.S. was concerned with its ability to project military force in the Middle East, and to keep the oil flowing.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/index.htm

[Lithos]

8. Curious the timing

What with Delay. I imagine he picked this moment because he knew what they were going to do.

L-

[superconnected]

9. Hussein is a murderous thug who deserves the DP .

So is Bush and Cheney, and GH Bush - and many of his affiliates.

Too bad a world court doesn't round up all of these genocidal scum and charge them. The world would be better off.

As it stands, most of the mass murders are still running free, and living distinguished lives on the blood and money of others. Sadams trial is a small win for the world.

[phusion]

13. exactly...

At least we got Charles Taylor, too...and Milosevic.

It's a start. Here's a tip to potential prosecutors: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

[KDLarsen]

15. A small curiosity about the trial..

Bushra Khalil, one of Saddam's lawyers, was kicked out of the court room today, after she had shown pictures from Abu Ghraib. This was a part of Saddam's verbal assault against the current Iraqi government, accusing them of genocide.

Facts are apparently not welcome in this show trial.