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Saddam wanted foreign cash to bury Kurds
29.9.2006
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SYDNEY, September 29, -- Saddam Hussein's regime
in Iraq wanted foreign cash to build thousands of
concrete bunkers to bury dead Kurds, an inquiry into
abuses of the UN oil-for-food program heard on
Friday.
The claims emerged in the sensational final stages
of a hearing into whether Australian wheat exporter
AWB illegally channeled cash to the regime of
Saddam, who is on trial in Iraq for the genocide of
182,000 people in a 1987-88 campaign against the
Kurds.
The nine-month-old probe on Friday saw a damning
internal document from AWB which revealed that
executives knew the Iraqis wanted foreign currency
in 2001 to build 2,000 concrete burial bunkers.
"The bunkers will have cement walls and floors so
they are actually designed for burying the Kurds,"
said an email from AWB executive Daryl Borlase to
several other AWB staff.
"Under the cement?? They intend to build them with
fumigation capability so the mind boggles as to
whether they are fumigating insects or any other
pest that pisses them off," the email read.
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Former dictator Saddam Hussein
Photo : AFP |
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Inquiry lawyer John Agius questioned AWB's former
managing director Andrew Lindberg about the email,
asking if the firm's staff knew of the atrocities
that Saddam's government was capable of while it was
passing on kickbacks.
"Would you agree ... there were personnel within AWB
(who knew) what the Iraqi regime was capable of
doing?" Agius asked.
Lindberg said: "I think it is open for you to draw
that inference."
Agius said he was asking the question as the inquiry
was tasked with weighing "whether or not it might be
said AWB committed an offence under terrorism
offences in the (Australian) criminal code".
AFP
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