War crimes

OF all the crimes that Saddam Hussein was accused of, the most notorious was the use of poison gas against the Kurds of Halabja. So there is disappointment in Kurdistan that he was executed before being convicted over that massacre. When the Halabja trial resumes on January 8 his seat in the front row of the dock will be empty.

An estimated 5,000 died in a chemical weapons attack on Halabja in March 1988 as Saddam sought to crush a suspected Kurdish “northern front” in the war with Iran. Tens of thousands more were killed in the broader anti-Kurd campaign — dubbed Anfal, or “spoils of war” — when entire villages were flattened and their inhabitants removed.

Saddam’s cousin General Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, is accused of carrying out the worst of the atrocities and he is likely to face execution if convicted of genocide.

Saddam was sent to the gallows for a relatively obscure case involving the deaths of 148 Shi’ites from the town of Dujail 24 years ago. Although less notorious than Halabja, Dujail nonetheless bore all the trademarks of Saddam’s style of butchery.

Dujail is a Shi’ite town situated about 40 miles north of Baghdad. Tired after decades of repression by the Sunni-dominated Ba’athist security forces, 19 Shi’ites from Dujail risked all on an assassination attempt on July 8, 1982. They were members of Daawa, the formerly banned Shi-ite party that now governs Iraq with the Kurds.

Tipped off that the president would be visiting the area, they lay in wait with machineguns. At 1.30pm, as the president’s convoy of 22 Mercedes limousines approached, the men opened fire.

“We did not know the cars were bulletproof,” said Faris al-Dujaili, one of the attackers. “If only we’d had RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] we would have saved Iraq from this oppressor.”

He saw Saddam scramble for shelter beneath his car while his bodyguards and escorts laid down covering fire. Nine of al-Dujaili’s colleagues were killed and he claimed that 22 of the dictator’s men also died.

Saddam continued his visit, but within an hour of his departure gunships and special forces arrived to raze Dujail. Thousands of acres of palm and fruit plantations, the main source of income for the villagers, were put to the torch.

Among villagers who were rounded up by troops, despite having played no part in the fighting, were the husband, six daughters, six sons, daughter-in-law and six-year-old grandson of Um Talal-Khuraytli. Now an elderly woman, haggard and worn out, she remembers the events vividly.

Most of those arrested were taken to Abu Ghraib prison where Um Talal last saw her menfolk. The women and children were moved to a vast prison in Bassiyah, located in the desert near the border with Saudi Arabia.

“No one could come in or escape,” Um Talal said. She and her daughters spent 4½ years incarcerated there. In a barbarically cruel act the guards killed Raida, her pregnant daughter-in-law, by tying her legs together when she was in labour.

“She screamed in pain for hours,” Um Talal said. “They left her in labour and would not untie her. Eventually she and the unborn baby died.” Raida’s son Muthana, who was six, was taken away to the men’s section of the prison where he died.

Speaking before Saddam’s trial, Um Talal was dissatisfied with the prospect of simple revenge. “If they hanged Saddam in front of me and I was given the chance to cut him to pieces, it would not be enough,” she said.

Remembering her dead children, she insisted: “Each of them was worth 1,000 Saddams. I wish they would let me drink his [Saddam’s] blood so that I can quench the fire in my heart.”

Khalil al-Dulaymi, one of Saddam’s lawyers, said before his trial for the Dulail crimes: “It is natural when someone tries to assassinate the president for him to respond in a firm manner against such a threat and to remove everything that may repeat such an attempt.”