Prosecutors at Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial on Wednesday produced government memos that they said link the ousted dictator personally to lethal gas attacks on Kurds.
Chief prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon submitted a series of official documents, which he said showed Saddam and his six co-defendants involved in planning chemical attacks during the 1988 Anfal campaign against Kurdish rebels.
A March 1987 military intelligence memo sent to the Presidency urged Saddam to approve the bombing of Kurdish militants and the Iranian forces they were supporting with the sarin nerve agent and mustard gas, Faroon said.
Saddam, in his reply, gave the go-ahead, the prosecutor said, producing a document he said contained written proof of the former ruler’s culpability.
“The president ordered that our office study with experts [the] launching [of] a sudden strike on the Khomeini forces based with Barzani saboteurs using the special weapon,” the memo said, using Saddam-era terms for Iranian and Kurdish troops.
Faroon produced further military intelligence memos that he said proved chemical weapons had been deployed, including one dated July 1987 in which the bombing of Kurdish village Balisan by a “special weapon” was recorded.
A memo in November of that year, headed “Removal of villages”, refers to the destruction of nine Kurdish villages in northern Iraq, the prosecutor said.
The defendants are accused of killing 182Â 000 Kurds in the late 1980s when government troops allegedly suppressed a Kurdish uprising by using artillery, air strikes, death camps and poison-gas attacks.
They insist the so-called Anfal campaign was a legitimate counter-insurgency operation against Kurdish separatists at a time when Iraq was at war with Iran.
Saddam was sentenced to death a month ago for his role in the execution of 148 Shi’ites in revenge for an assassination attempt against him in the town of Dujail in 1982. A panel of appeal court judges are reviewing the verdict. — AFP