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| 'Chemical Ali' Led 1999 Basra Massacre --Rights Body | ||
| 2005-02-17 | ||
| Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam Hussein's feared cousin and expected to be one of the first of his henchmen to face trial for war crimes in Iraq, massacred Shi'ites as well as Kurds, a report issued Thursday said. Human Rights Watch said Majid, known as 'Chemical Ali' for gassing the Kurds in 1988, ordered the execution of hundreds of Shi'ites in Basra during a 1999 uprising sparked by the assassination of Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr. Saddam was blamed for killing the revered Shi'ite cleric and two of his sons. Sadr's third son is Moqtada al-Sadr, the rebellious young Shi'ite cleric who has led two uprisings against U.S. forces in the past year. Human Rights Watch said it had a document and witnesses implicating Majid in the execution of at least 120 men and boys from the uprising, in which 40 Baath Party officials died. "Research ... strongly suggests that Iraqi security forces and Baath Party members, under the direct command and supervision of Ali Hassan al-Majid, engaged in systematic extrajudicial executions, widespread arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and collective punishment," the report said. Iraqi officials expect Majid to be among the first of 11 Saddam lieutenants to go on trial for a range of crimes, including crimes against humanity and genocide, for his role in the poison gas attacks that killed thousands of Iraqi Kurds. Lawyers warn guilt may be hard to prove for attacks that happened so many years ago. But the evidence gathered by Human Rights Watch is recent and may be more convincing in court. DOCUMENTED EVIDENCE Its investigators visited Basra in April and May 2003 and obtained a four-page hand-written document from Shi'ite clerics. It had been found in the offices of Saddam's secret police when government buildings were looted after British troops entered the city in April 2003. The list is anonymous, carrying no official letterhead to link it to Saddam's security forces, a precaution that Human Rights Watch has noted with other potentially incriminating documents of the former regime. But its authenticity is strengthened by the fact that relatives have matched 29 of the names on the list with bodies exhumed from a mass grave near Basra. Neat columns list 120 men and boys aged between 16 and 36, give their home addresses in Basra, the dates on which they were executed and which teams carried out the killing. Each page has an identical heading: "List of the names of the criminals who confessed to taking part in the event of March 17-18, 1999." The captives died in four batches, between March 25 and May 8, 1999, and the document says the order was given by "the Commander of the Southern Sector." This was Majid.
Human Rights Watch also found witnesses to the executions. One, a 27-year old cattle herder named Sattar, said he had stumbled on bulldozers digging three deep trenches near the Nassiriya to Basra road one day in spring 1999. "The next morning about 9 a.m., while at the same place again with my herd, four buses and six Baath Party-like cars arrived on the scene," Sattar said. He hid himself, and saw the passengers leave the buses, guarded by armed men wearing the olive green uniform of the Baath Party. "Between 80 and 100 persons might have been on the buses. The prisoners were led in a line to the trenches where they were placed one by one ... Seconds later, the men in uniforms began shooting randomly at the prisoners with AK47s and BKC machineguns. The shooting lasted several minutes," he said.
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| Posted by:Steve |
| #1 But the US wasn't supposed to go into Iraq because it was a move of sheer US aggression-isn't that what all the lefties from Dean to Kucinich to heads of state in the "International Community" have been telling us? Guess that means we have an humanitarian obligation to put al-Majid back in place to continue his work? |
| Posted by: Jules 187 2005-02-17 1:35:44 PM |