Queue for the scaffold

Saddam Hussein's associates are on trial in Baghdad

Iraq's High Criminal Court held its first hearing in Baghdad yesterday in the case of the Iraqi army and security forces' suppression of a Shiite uprising in the south of the country in 1991. The meeting was chaired by Shiite Muhammad al-Uraybi al-Khalifa. 15 associates of the executed Saddam Hussein were put on trial, among whom the most odious figure is his cousin, 66-year-old Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali .

In 1988, Chemical Ali led Operation Anfal (spoils) to suppress mass uprisings of the Kurds. During the operation, 182 thousand people were killed, hundreds of thousands were deported. On November 16, 1998, Iraqi Air Force planes dropped canisters of mustard gas and nerve gas on the Kurdish city of Halabja. Then al-Majid’s “trophies” amounted to five thousand people who died in terrible torture and tens of thousands of cripples, for which he received his nickname.

After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Chemical Ali headed the administration of the occupied emirate, which Saddam was quick to call the 19th province of Iraq. In subsequent years, al-Majid served as ministers of interior and defense. The Americans captured Saddam's cousin in August 2003.

In addition to Chemical Ali, the former Saddam Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai and the ex-head of military intelligence Sabir Abdel Aziz al-Douri were in the dock. Saddam's nephew and former head of the General Security Service Sabaawi Ibrahim al-Hassan, the dictator's personal secretary Abid Hamid Hmoud and former chief of the general staff Hussein Rashid will also appear in court. All of them are accused of crimes against humanity.

Let us recall that after the Iraqi-American War in the Persian Gulf in 1991, the cities of Basra, Najaf and Karbala in southern Iraq witnessed mass protests by Shiites against the dictatorship of Saddam, which were brutally suppressed by the Iraqi army and security forces. The number of killed Shiites then numbered tens of thousands. There is almost no documentary evidence of these events; most of the documents were destroyed on Saddam’s personal orders. But the court will hear testimony from about a hundred surviving witnesses who are determined to confirm the guilt of the defendants.

Chemical Ali, former Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad and former Republican Guard commander Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti were already sentenced to death by hanging on June 24 for their participation in the punitive operation Anfal. They appealed to the court with a request to reduce the sentence. If their appeal is rejected, then even before the end of the current trial they will add to the martyrology of the former elite of Iraq, opened by Saddam Hussein on December 30 last year. In mid-January, his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti, the ex-head of the Revolutionary Tribunal Awad Hamad al-Bandar, and Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan were hanged in March.

Victor VOLODIN