An investigative judge will file new criminal charges against Saddam Hussein in the next few days charging him in the deaths and deportation of thousands of Kurds in the 1980s, a government prosecutor has said. Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi on Sunday said the new charges, which would be announced in the coming days, would involve Saddam's alleged role in "Operation Anfal", which included the 1988 gassing of about 5,000 Kurdish civilians in the village of Halabja.In all, Kurds maintain that more than 180,000 of their people were killed in Anfal, which began in 1987 and ended a year later. Hundreds of Kurdish villages in northern Iraq were destroyed and thousands were forced to leave their homes. Al-Moussawi did not specify when the charges would be filed, but the Iraqi court which handles cases against the ousted ruler announced a press conference for Tuesday.
