Iraqi Kurds says enforcing or commuting Anfal
sentences up to Iraqi judiciary
November 16, 2007
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan region 'Iraq', -- The Iraqi Kurdistan Region's government said on
Friday that it would not interfere in the sentences
handed down against the former regime's officials
convicted of killing thousands of Iraqi Kurds during
the late 1980s.
"Kurds in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region support
whatever sentences handed down against the Anfal
convicts, be it execution or commuting of these
rulings," according to a statement by Jamal
Abdullah, the spokesman for the Iraqi Kurdistan
government.
Abdullah's statements come amidst legal controversy
over the enforcement of the verdicts given by Iraqi
courts against the Anfal defendants.
Iraqi courts had found guilty five of the six
defendants in the Anfal case and acquitted only one. |
Ali Hassan al-Majid, first cousin of executed
dictator Saddam Hussein and also known as 'Chemical
Ali', 'Butcher of Kurdistan' sentenced to death over Kurdish genocide, AP |
|
Death sentences were handed down against Ali Hassan
al-Majid knowen as "Chemical Ali", the cousin of the
former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Sultan Hashim
Ahmed, the former minister of defense, and Hussein
Rashid al-Tikriti, assistant chief of staff of the
former Iraqi army, after they were found guilty of
genocide of ethnic Iraqi Kurds.
Saber Abdul-Aziz al-Dori, director of the former
military intelligence, and Farhan Motlak al-Juburi,
chief of the former intelligence in the Northern
Zone, received life sentences, while former Mosul
governor Taher Tawfiq al-Aani was acquitted.
Anfal was an anti-Kurdish campaign led by the former
regime between 1986 and 1989 and involved a series
of military campaigns against the Kurdish Peshmerga
fighters as well as the mostly Kurdish civilian
population of southern Kurdistan 'Northern Iraq'.
Independent sources estimate there were 50,000 to
more than 100,000 deaths in the campaign, in which
chemical weapons were used, while Kurds claim about
182,000 Kurds were killed. www.ekurd.net
Iraq's Criminal Court heard the case of the Anfal
(or Spoils of War, taken from Surat al-Anfal in the
Qur'an) campaign. Charges against the prime
defendant Saddam Hussein were dropped after his
execution on December 30, 2006, four days after an
appellate body upheld a death sentence by a court
considering the case of al-Dujail, a small town in
northern Baghdad.
The court had found Saddam and a number of his aides
guilty of responsibility for the killing of 148
people following an attempt on Saddam's life in
1982, during the eight-year Iraq-Iran war.
On April 2, 2007 the chief prosecutor in the Anfal
case urged the court to release al-Aani, extenuate a
sentence for Dori and to hand down death sentences
against the four others.
On October 19, the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF)
called for the release of former Iraqi defense
minister Ahmed and the canceling of court rulings to
execute him and his colleague officers convicted in
the case.
"We demand the Iraqi government to release former
Iraqi Defense Minister General Sultan Hashim Ahmed.
The Iraqi government has to respect and hold in high
esteem the Iraqi officers known for their patriotism
and valor and who spent a long time defending the
nation against foreign assaults," IAF chief Adnan
al-Delaimi said.
The trials of former Iraqi officers and commanders
were "politically motivated, illegal and only a
retribution against patriotic Iraqis on behalf of
the enemy," said Delaimi in reference to Iran, with
which Iraq has been in a state of war for eight
years. www.ekurd.net
Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashimi had said that
he received a confirmation from the U.S. embassy in
Iraq that it would not hand over the convicts in the
Anfal case except after the issuance of a republican
decree upholding their execution.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Vice President
Hashimi, who along with Vice President Adel
Abdul-Mahdi form the Presidential Council in Iraq,
had declined to endorse the execution of Ahmed,
causing heated controversy in Iraq's political and
legal circles as views varied about the actual need
for a republican decree so that the government may
apply death sentences.
VOI
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