Former dictator Saddam Hussein will stand trial for a range of charges — from gassing thousands of Kurds to executing political and religious leaders, according to a list of the cases against him obtained from the special tribunal on Monday.
Meanwhile, insurgents opposed to Iraq’s new government launched mortar attacks that killed six civilians in the country’s north, officials said on Monday.
Iraqi officials want the case against Saddam, who could face 500 charges if prosecutors were to proceed on all counts, to concentrate on about a dozen thoroughly documented cases on which authorities believe the ousted leader will be convicted.
A list obtained by The Associated Press (AP) early on Monday from the special tribunal, which will hear the case against Saddam and 11 of his henchmen, shows that prosecutors seem to be concentrating on 14 cases concerning his alleged crimes. Many received international attention during Saddam’s three decades in power.
The list contains few details, but among the crimes the tribunal says Saddam committed are:
- executing at least 50 Iraqis in 1982 in the Shi’ite town of Dujail, 80km north of Baghdad, in retaliation for a failed assassination attempt against Saddam;
- killing and deporting 8 000 members of the powerful Kurdish Barzani tribe, to which the current Kurdistan Democratic Party leader, Massoud Barzani, belongs;
- the 1988 chemical weapons attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja that killed an estimated 5 000 people;
- executing prominent religious and political figures;
- ordering the seven-month occupation of Kuwait that was ended by the 1991 United States-led Gulf War; and
- the 1991 suppression of a Shi’ite uprising in southern Iraq.
Iraqi authorities believe the trial against Saddam, which could start within two months, will have a major effect on curbing the violent insurgency, which has killed at least 844 people since the new Shi’ite Muslim-led government was announced on April 28, according to an AP count.
Separate mortar barrages on Sunday and Monday, apparently targeting police stations in the northern city of Mosul, killed six Iraqis, including two children, US and Iraqi officials said.
Gunmen also killed an Egyptian with US citizenship in western Baghdad, police Lieutenant Hamid Zaki said on Monday. The victim, identified as Ahmed Kamal, was shot dead on Sunday while driving his car. Zaki said Kamal worked as a contractor with Iraq’s electricity ministry.
Egyptian and US embassy officials had no immediate comment.
Kazem Shelash, a senior member of the disbanded Ba’ath Party in Basra, was killed by two gunmen in a speeding car outside his shop in downtown Basra, police Colonel Karim al-Zeidi said.
A US soldier was killed on Sunday when a roadside bomb exploded near a military patrol in northern Iraq in the province of Kirkuk, the military said on Monday. At least 1 669 US military members have died since the Iraq war began in March 2003, according to an AP count.
Iraqi police shot at a suicide car bomber, whose vehicle still exploded at a western Baghdad checkpoint on Monday, wounding three police and three bystanders, a police official said. The US military said the bomber’s hands were tied to the steering wheel, indicating he had no alternative but to carry out the attack, even if he had second thoughts.
In a bid to combat the insurgency, particularly in Baghdad, where suicide bombings and drive-by shootings are almost daily occurrences, Iraqi authorities have launched a US-backed counter-insurgency campaign dubbed Operation Lightning.
The US Army’s Third Infantry Division, which oversees military operations in the capital, provided figures showing that 887 suspected insurgents have been detained and 38 weapons caches uncovered since the operation began on May 22.
Sunni Muslim organisations are complaining that many innocent Iraqis have been arrested during the blitz and that most were Sunnis, the minority that dominated the country during Saddam’s rule and is believed to form the insurgency’s backbone.
”There is an improvement in security and in the performance of the security forces, but members of the army and police do cause mistakes, which do happen,” Laith Kuba, spokesperson for Iraq’s prime minister, said.
The charges of overzealous behaviour by security forces coincides with government efforts to include Sunni Arabs in the political process and to get them involved in drafting Iraq’s new Constitution. Sunni approval is necessary for the charter’s adoption in a national referendum. It is to be ready by mid-August and approved nationwide in an October vote.
Iraqi authorities believe Saddam loyalists and Sunni extremists are responsible for most of the attacks, which are designed to topple the new government that is dominated by Shi’ites and Kurds, communities long oppressed under the former Iraqi president’s three-decade rule.
Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs Hoshyar Zebari and other officials have been saying Saddam’s trial should start within two months. They also believe giving the dictator, who was captured in December 2003, his day in court and airing the allegations levelled against him will help take the wind out of the insurgency.
Meanwhile, Australia’s top Sunni Muslim cleric, who is in Iraq trying to negotiate the release of Australian hostage and Douglas Wood (63), said on Monday he has seen footage of the captive indicating that he is alive, but not the man himself.
”I have seen a recent CD video lasting 12 to 15 minutes, where Wood is alive and good and in honest hands,” Sheik Taj El Din al-Hilaly said of California-based Wood, who was captured by insurgents in late April. — Sapa-AP