At Saddam’s Latest Trial, Kurdish Survivors Recount Atrocities
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
BASRA, Iraq — Kurdish survivors of Iraqi army attacks told the trial of Saddam Hussein yesterday how their villages were covered by clouds of gas that burned skin and eyes and left men, women, and children screaming on the ground as they died.
The testimony came on the second day of the war-crimes case relating to the Anfal [Spoils of War] campaign of 1987–88 ordered by Saddam to suppress Kurdish separatists, in which 182,000 Kurds are alleged to have been killed.
As well as the use of poison gas, the prosecution alleges that tens of thousands died in airstrikes and artillery bombardments while others were rounded into camps and executed en masse.
Saddam has already been tried on a charge of ordering the execution of 148 Shiite Muslims in Dujail following a failed assassination attempt in 1982. A verdict on that case is expected in October.
Yesterday, in the first witness testimony at the Anfal trial, Ali Mustafa Hama described how on April 16, 1987, eight to 12 jets had begun to circle over his village in the Belisand valley north of Sulaimaniya.
“Workers were heading home, shepherds taking home their goats, and birds returning to their nests,” he said. “All at once, [the jets] threw their fire and bombs.
“The explosions weren’t that loud. There was greenish smoke from the bombs. People were vomiting. We were blinded. We were screaming. There was no one to save us. Only God. There were two women. One of them was pregnant. When she gave birth, the little infant was trying to see the world. He breathed in the chemicals and died.”
A second witness, Najiba Khider Ahmed, 41, told how, when her village, Sheikh Wasan, was attacked, “It was like the apocalypse.”
She said she had since been pregnant twice. The first baby was born with skin peeling from its body, and the second miscarried and had malformed limbs, all of which she blamed on the gas.
The testimony was so harrowing that one of the court recorders was reduced to tears.
Alongside Saddam, six former Baathist officials and military officers are on trial, among them Ali Hassan al-Majid, also know as “Chemical Ali,” who is accused of organizing the attacks. Saddam and Mr. Majid are charged with genocide, the rest with crimes against humanity.
