BAGHDAD, 22 August 2007 — Saddam Hussein’s cousin known as “Chemical Ali” and 14 others went on trial yesterday in the brutal crushing of a Shiite uprising that killed tens of thousands after the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq’s third trial against former regime officials opened with three of the defendants already sentenced to death in another case.
The Iraqi High Tribunal said the defendants faced the capital charge of crimes against humanity for allegedly engaging in widespread or systematic attacks against the civilian population, and the evidence would include testimony from about 90 victims and witnesses.
Saddam’s cousin and the former defense minister Ali Hassan Al-Majid, who gained the nickname “Chemical Ali” after chemical attacks on Kurdish towns during the so-called Anfal campaign, entered the courtroom wearing his traditional white Arab robe and a red-and-white checkered headdress. He sat subdued for most of the trial, only standing once to question the first witness.
The chief judge, Mohammed Oreibi Al-Khalifa, told the men they were charged with crimes against humanity, which court officials said included murder, torture, persecution and random detentions and carry the maximum penalty of death by hanging.
The charges stem from the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, in which the US drove Saddam’s forces from Kuwait. Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north sought to take advantage of Saddam’s defeat, launching uprisings and seizing control of 14 of the country’s 18 provinces.
US troops created a safe haven for the Kurds in three northern provinces, preventing Saddam from attacking. But the late dictator’s troops marched into the predominantly Shiite south and crushed the uprising, killing tens of thousands of people.
“The acts committed against the Iraqi people in 1991 by the security forces and by the defendants sitting were among one of the ugliest crimes ever committed against humanity in modern history,” the prosecutor Mahdi Abdul-Amir said in opening remarks.
Sabir Al-Douri, former director of military intelligence, told the judge he was in Baghdad during the 1991 uprising and did not visit the south during this period.
Sabawi Ibrahim, who is one of Saddam’s half-brothers and was head of the feared Mukhabarat intelligence agency at the time of the uprising, defended the regime’s invasion of Kuwait as Iraq’s “historic right” and said the court was illegal because it was backed by the US.
