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Court charges Hussein with genocide

The Iraqi court takes up the first large-scale accusations against the ex-leader, in this case the deaths of 50,000 Kurds.

By wire services
Published April 5, 2006

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi court trying Saddam Hussein announced Tuesday that it had charged him with genocide, saying he had sought to annihilate the Kurdish people in 1988, when the military killed at least 50,000 Kurdish civilians and destroyed 2,000 villages.

The case is the first against Hussein to address the large-scale human rights violations committed during his decades in power, the same acts the Bush administration has publicized in explaining the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Six other defendants also face charges.

Since the United Nations adopted the genocide convention in 1948, very few courts have charged defendants with genocide, the attempt to annihilate an ethnic, religious, national or political group in whole or in part.

Convictions have been handed down in the tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia.

Raid Juhi, the chief judge of the Iraqi High Tribunal's investigative court, said it would be up to other judges to decide when the genocide trial would start.

The court defines the Anfal campaign, whose name means "the spoils" from a favorite Koranic verse of Hussein's, as eight military operations in 1988 in the Kurdish homeland of northern Iraq.

Juhi said the court had gathered evidence like documents and mass graves for the deaths of at least 50,000 civilians.

All seven defendants are charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes. Hussein and one other defendant, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," also have been charged with genocide, which legal experts say is difficult to prove.

"These charges should not be addressed to President Saddam," said Khalil al-Dulaimi, Hussein's chief lawyer. "They should be addressed to the American and British forces, because they are killing the Iraqi people and using weapons of mass destruction against the Iraqi people."

The other defendants are Sultan Hashim Ahmad, the commander of the campaign; Saber Abdul Aziz al-Douri, director of military intelligence; Hussein al-Tikriti, deputy of operations for Iraqi forces; Taher Tafwiq al-Ani, governor of Mosul; and Farhan Mutlaq al-Jubouri, head of military intelligence in the north.

GOVERNMENT: An Iraqi vice president called Tuesday for the Shiite prime minister to step aside so a new government can be formed, becoming the most senior Shiite official to do so publicly. Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi said that he asked Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Monday but that Jaafari refused, insisting he wanted to take his case to Parliament. President Bush urged the Iraqis on Tuesday to speed up the talks.

VIOLENCE: A car bomb exploded Tuesday in a mostly Shiite area of eastern Baghdad, killing at least 10 people. At least a dozen other Iraqis were killed in war-related violence.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

[Last modified April 5, 2006, 00:38:13]