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BAGHDAD, Oct 16: Former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein is to stand trial on Wednesday for the 1982 massacre of 143 Iraqi Shias, but has also been accused of many other crimes against humanity.
If convicted on the first charge and if the sentence is upheld, he would face death by hanging and might never be judged for all of the accusations.
Following are other alleged crimes for which the military dictator might be formally charged at a later stage.
HALABJA/ANFAL: The gassing of Kurds in Halabja, northern Iraq during the infamous Anfal campaign that included a policy of demolishing homes, evictions and separating men from their families.
More than 5,000 people died in Halabja on March 16, 1988, and even survivors still suffer from after-effects of the chemical bomb attacks, which also provoked birth defects in children born later.
Between February and November 1988, the Anfal campaign declared 95 per cent of property in the north off-limits, and 180,000 people are reported to have disappeared.
Many women and children died from a lack of food and medical attention, and Kurdish militants were allegedly executed in the deserts of western and southwest Iraq.
President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, said recently that Saddam had “confessed” to some of his alleged crimes and deserved to die 100 times.
WAR WITH IRAN: The United Nations has blamed Saddam’s Iraq for starting the 1980-1988 conflict against Iran. Around one million people were estimated to have been killed in the eight-year war before Iran accepted a UN-sponsored ceasefire.
Iran’s judiciary says it has finalised charges of genocide and using chemical weapons it hopes will be levelled against Saddam.
KUWAIT INVASION: Saddam’s tanks rolled into Kuwait on August 2, 1990, annexing the oil-rich Gulf state as Iraq’s 19th province and its historical right. His troops were driven out of the tiny emirate after a seven-month occupation in the Gulf War by US-led multinational forces.
In September, Kuwaiti authorities said they would also seek a trial and the death penalty for Saddam’s crimes against the emirate.
1991 SHIA UPRISING: After Iraq’s defeat in the Gulf War over Kuwait, coalition forces encouraged soldiers and civilians to rise up against Saddam in the south, but tens of thousands were subsequently massacred.
Brutal crackdowns were launched around the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, in the Hilla and Basra regions.
MARSHES: in 1991 for military purposes, the military dictator started engineering projects to drain the marshes of southern Iraq inhabited by Shias, forcing a centuries-old Marsh Arab people to abandon their land that could no longer provide an income and an ancient way of life.
BARZANI TRIBE: Saddam is also accused of the 1983 massacre in the Kurdish tribe of Mullah Mustafa Barzani, the founding father of Iraqi Kurdistan who died in March 1979.
Saddam’s regime rounded up around 8,000 men from the tribe in northern Iraq, took them into the desert and executed them.
In 1980, another tribe of Faylee Kurds were expelled from Iraq to Iran, while some were massacred in northern Iraq.
RELIGIOUS LEADERS: Saddam is also accused of assassinating a string of Shia religious leaders between 1980, when the war with Iran broke out, and in 1999.
HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES: The feared dictator is alleged to have systematically tortured, executed or intimidated all Iraqis who opposed his regime, whether Shias, Sunnis, Kurd, Turkomen or other.—AFP
