BAGHDAD, 20 August 2006 — Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein could be tried posthumously for genocide if an Iraqi court decides to execute him for a separate accusation of mass murder, a US official in Baghdad said yesterday.
According to a US legal expert who briefed reporters anonymously ahead of Saddam’s trial for his alleged role in the Anfal campaign against Iraq’s Kurdish minority, the case could be delayed by a verdict in the first case.
The Anfal trial is to begin tomorrow, but a verdict in the other case is expected on Oct. 16, when Iraqi judges will rule on whether the former strongman ordered the illegal execution of 148 Shiite villagers.
If found guilty, Saddam could face execution or life imprisonment, in which case he would have an automatic right to appeal.
“If the tribunal decides on the appeal during the Anfal trial and if it upholds the death penalty the sentence has to be carried out within 30 days of the decision on the appeal,” the US official said.
“Which means theoretically, that if Saddam is given the death penalty and if everything falls in place, he can be executed and the Anfal trial can carry on posthumously,” he added.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, said earlier this year that Saddam should be tried for all his crimes before any of the verdicts are implemented and any death penalty could prove controversial.
The United Nations, for example, has refused to provide “logistical support to the Iraqi High Tribunal” because of the world body’s opposition to the death penalty, the US official said.
Saddam ‘Exercising’ Ahead of Genocide Trial
Saddam has been exercising and eating well in order to be in top form tomorrow when he faces charges of genocide against Iraq’s Kurdish minority, a US official said yesterday.
Between 120 to 140 complainants and witnesses will testify against Saddam and six others for their alleged role in executing the infamous 1987-88 Anfal campaign in which around 100,000 Kurds were killed.
“We are told that he is exercising and also eating” regularly since the end of his first trial, said the US official, who is close to the Iraqi High Tribunal trying Saddam, but briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.
The former strongman frequently launched hunger strikes to protest his treatment during the previous case, in which Saddam and seven co-defendants stood accused of killing 148 Shiites villagers in Dujail, north of Baghdad.
“He started eating right away since he walked out of the court on the last day of the trial,” said another Western official.
The Anfal trail could last until near the end of the year. “The court is prepared to work every week and we anticipate three to four sessions in a week,” said the US court official.
“We still do not know how many witnesses the defense will put up but we expect all defendants to be present in court on Monday.”
Iraqi prosecutors brand Anfal, which means “spoils,” as an act of genocide against the Kurds, while the former regime has defended its actions as no more than a necessary counter-insurgency operation during wartime. Although estimates vary, it is believed some 100,000 Kurds were killed in the eight-stage military campaign and more than 3,000 villages were destroyed. By 1986, with the regime under severe strain because of its war with Iran, swathes of the Kurdish region had become free of central government control.
In 1987 Saddam charged his cousin Ali Hassan Al-Majid, who was known as “Chemical Ali” because of his fondness for poison gas attacks, with bringing the area back under state control.
Ali began by declaring “prohibited” zones. Villagers were moved to defined and easily controlled settlements, while the prohibited areas were first bombarded and then invaded by Iraqi troops.
The other five defendants include former Minister of Defense Sultan Hashim Ahmed and high-ranking Baathists Saber Al-Duri, Hussein Rashid Al-Tikriti, Taher Mohammed Al-Ani and Farhan Al-Juburi.
While Saddam and Majid face charges of genocide, along with crimes against humanity and war crimes, the other five are not accused of genocide.
The official said prosecutors were “not required to prove that 50,000 people were killed” but that “people were killed brutally using chemical gases, artillery strikes...villages were bombed...men, women and children were buried in mass graves.” During the Anfal trial, prosecution witnesses are expected to be named and appear publicly unlike those who testified against the accused in the Dujail massacre, the Western official said.
“The security situation in Kurdistan is better than here (in Baghdad), so we anticipate witnesses not to conceal themselves like they did in the Dujail trial where the situation was different,” he said.
Experts had expressed concern over the credibility of Dujail witnesses as they testified against the accused from behind a curtain in the courtroom.
