BAGHDAD, May 15: Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein returned to court on Monday and refused to enter a plea after he was formally charged with ordering the killing and torture of hundreds of Shia villagers. Following are details of the two criminal cases for which the former Iraqi military dictator now faces trial and details of others for which he could ultimately be tried:
DUJAIL MASSACRE
— The detailed charges read out by Judge Raouf Abdel Rahman stemmed from the killing of 148 Shias after an attempt on Saddam’s life in 1982 in the village of Dujail.
— Saddam and seven others, including his half-brother, are accused of ordering the killing and torture of hundreds in the village, including women and children, and that he sent helicopters and planes to pound Dujail, north of Baghdad.
KURDISH GENOCIDE AND ETHNIC CLEANSING
Iraqi government forces launched a drive in 1987 and 1988 to reassert government control over Kurdish areas in the north. The campaign, dubbed “Anfal” or “Spoils of War”, saw entire villages flattened, farming destroyed and inhabitants forcibly removed.
— Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were displaced and tens of thousands killed during the drive. A mustard- and nerve-gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja killed as many as 5,000 people in March 1988. Saddam’s cousin, General Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as “Chemical Ali”, is accused of carrying out the worst of the atrocities. He has said the crackdown was to punish Halabja for its failure to resist Iranian incursions during the Iran-Iraq war.
INVASION OF KUWAIT
Saddam is accused of violating international law by ordering the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. A US-led coalition demanded Iraq’s withdrawal and went to war on Jan 17, 1991, after Saddam refused to comply with UN resolutions. The war ended on Feb 28 after Iraq’s expulsion from the emirate.
— During the occupation Iraqi soldiers tortured and summarily executed prisoners, looted Kuwait City and took hundreds of Kuwaiti captives back to Baghdad. Iraqi soldiers also set more than 700 oil wells ablaze and opened pipelines to let oil pour into the Gulf and other water sources.
The Iraqi army, under Saddam’s orders, is alleged to have systematically destroyed the livelihood of Iraq’s Marsh Arab people, who have inhabited south-eastern marshlands at the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers for nearly 5,000 years.
— Saddam accused the Marsh Arabs of desertion and fighting against his forces during the 1980-88 war with Iran, of harbouring criminals and dissenters, and of joining the Shia uprising in 1991. Saddam targeted the Marsh Arabs early in his rule when he ordered their habitat to be drained.
POLITICAL KILLINGS
Saddam and his security forces have been accused of numerous politically motivated killings and other human rights abuses, including the execution of five top Shia religious scholars in 1974, the murder of thousands of members of the Kurdish Barzani clan in 1983 and the assassinations of political activists.
POLITICAL REPRESSION
Saddam is accused of brutally suppressing uprisings by majority Shias in southern Iraq and ethnic Kurds in the north.
— Scores of mass graves south of Baghdad are said to contain the bodies of Shias. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled to Iran and Turkey. There are Kurdish mass graves in the north and in deserted areas of the south.
