The trial of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on charges including genocide for a brutal campaign against Kurds in the 1980s, which left 100Â 000 people dead, was set down on Tuesday for August 21.
“After the transfer of the investigation results of the al-Anfal crimes to the criminal court … the tribunal decided on Monday August 21 2006 as a trial date,” the Iraqi High Tribunal said in a statement.
The court had announced in April that Saddam and six co-defendants, including Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, would face genocide charges over the al-Anfal campaign against Iraq’s Kurds.
Saddam and seven co-defendants are currently on trial for allegedly executing 148 inhabitants of the Shi’ite village of Dujail following an assassination attempt there against Saddam in 1982.
They face execution by hanging if convicted in the Dujail case, which is set to resume on July 10. A United States official has said a verdict could be issued by mid-September.
But Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, has said that Saddam will be tried for all his crimes before any of the verdicts are implemented.
Aside from Saddam, other defendants in the August trial include the so-called Chemical Ali, notorious for ordering the gassing of Halabja in 1988, which killed 5Â 000 people.
However, because the Halabja attack was not part of the eight official al-Anfal campaigns, it will not be included in the trial.
Central to the August trial will be al-Majid and accusations he made liberal use of poisonous gas, mass executions and prison camps to subdue the north from 1987 to 1989, when there were major attacks on the Kurds.
Though estimates vary, it is believed at least 100Â 000 Kurds died during this period with over 3Â 000 villages destroyed.
The term “Anfal” comes from the Qur’an and means spoils of war. The campaign involved a systematic bombardment, gassing and then assault of various parts of the Kurdish autonomous region in 1988.
Prosecutors have described the al-Anfal campaign as an act of genocide against the Kurdish people, while the former Iraqi regime defended its actions as no more than a necessary counter-insurgency operation during wartime.
Al-Majid, charged in 1987 by his cousin Saddam with bringing larges swathes of the northern Kurdish region back under control, began by declaring “prohibited” zones, much like the Vietnam war-era “free-fire” zones, where all inhabitants were considered insurgents.
Villagers were moved to defined, easily controlled settlements, while the prohibited areas were first bombarded and then invaded in classic counter-insurgency tactics.
According to New York-based Human Rights Watch, what made these campaigns different than just a counter-insurgency was a clear plan to exterminate the Kurds as a people.
“Tellingly, the killings were not in any sense concurrent with the counter-insurgency: the detainees were murdered several days or even weeks after the armed forces had secured their goals,” said the organisation in an extensive report on the campaign.
“Finally, there is the question of intent, which goes to the heart of the notion of genocide,” said the report, going on to detail the documents and testimony that make this intent clear.
Others set to be in the dock include former Minister of Defence Sultan Hashem Ahmed and high-ranking Ba’athists Saber Abdel Aziz, Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, Taher Mohammed al-Ani and Farhan al-Juburi.
A US official close to the court said in April that “the evidence that the court is going to look at involves voluminous amounts of documents, testimonies from a large number of victims and eyewitnesses and forensic evidence from mass graves that have been excavated”. — AFP