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January
8, 2007
Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan region (Iraq), --
Sarwa Omar, a 26-year-old Iraqi Kurdish housekeeper
whose father died in Kurdistan’s killing fields in
the 1980s, cried tears of anger when Saddam Hussain
was hanged last week.
"I didn’t cry because I liked him. I cried because
he didn’t get hanged for the Anfal case," said Omar,
referring to Saddam’s 1988 military campaign against
ethnic Kurds in which prosecutors say 180,000 people
were killed, many of them gassed.
"Kurdish officials should not have allowed this to
happen."
Some Kurds said Saddam’s execution on December 30
for crimes against humanity in the killing of 148
Shias robbed them of the historic opportunity of
trying the deposed leader for the graver crime of
genocide when the Anfal case resumes in a Baghdad
courtroom today.
Shia Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki rushed the
execution of his former enemy despite calls from US
officials for a delay and reservations from Maliki’s
Kurdish coalition partners, who had expected the
appeal process to run for months to allow more time
to have their grievances heard.
"Why didn’t they wait until the Anfal case was
finished to execute him?" said Satar Karim, 63, who
had three brothers killed in Anfal.
"The government killed him because they are
underestimating what happened in Anfal. Who is going
to compensate us now?"
Adala Omar, a civil servant in the Kurdish city of
Erbil, said majority Shias, in power since a US
invasion ended Saddam’s Sunni-dominated rule,
steamrollered the case to win a political victory to
the detriment of the judicial process.
Kurds had expected to try Saddam on other charges,
including a chemical gas attack on the Kurdish town
of Halabja that killed 5,000 people in 1988.
"I think Saddam’s execution in the Dujail case is a
political decision," Omar said. "The Shias are the
strongest part in the government and they imposed
their will in choosing the timing."
Saddam’s fellow Sunni Arabs have been angered by the
hanging after a clandestine video showed Shia
officials taunting him with sectarian slogans on the
gallows.
But other Kurds, while lamenting that Saddam will no
longer sit in the dock, said they will feel
vindicated if they win guilty sentences for the
former president’s six co-defendants, including Ali
Hassan al-Majid, known as ‘Chemical Ali’ and
considered the main enforcer of Anfal (Spoils of
War).
Kurds accuse Majid of playing a key role in the
killing of tens of thousands with chemical gas
attacks, summary executions, torture and destruction
of hundreds of villages. He faces genocide charges,
as did Saddam.
"Saddam is dead but the hero of the Anfal operation
is still alive," said Abdul Ghani Yahya, a man in
his 60s. "The Anfal case is still going on and I
will follow it."
Some fear the absence of Saddam, whose frequent
tirades against the US-backed court enthralled
television audiences, will diminish interest in the
Anfal proceedings.
Prosecutors in Anfal have gathered thousands of
documents and US-backed forensic experts have spent
months unearthing mass graves they have said they
will present as evidence.
"After the execution of Saddam the court will lose
its importance," said Abdul Rahman Zebari, a lawyer
for civil plaintiffs in the case. "The media won’t
care anymore."
Shamse Khader, 50, whose husband and one son
disappeared after being rounded up by Saddam’s
soldiers in 1988, said that with Saddam’s death she
had buried all her hopes.
"I waited all these years to hear something about
them. Now, I have lost all hope."
Reuters
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