|
Anfal verdict stirs painful memories for
Iraq's Kurds
24.6.2007
|
|
|
|
June
24, 2007
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan region (Iraq), June
24, -- Ifa Ismail was born in the back of a military
truck taking her family from their village in Iraq's
Kurdish north to an internment camp. She has no
memory of her mother, whose remains were found in a
mass grave in 2003.
Ifa, now a 19-year-old student, came into the world
in 1988, as Saddam Hussein's troops began a military
campaign against Iraq's minority Kurds in which tens
of thousands were killed, villages razed, and many
rounded up and forced into camps.
On Sunday, the architect of the so-called Anfal
campaign, Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed,
widely known as "Chemical Ali", was sentenced to
death for genocide by a court in Baghdad.
Kurds in Iraq's now largely autonomous Kurdistan
region, who have long sought justice over Anfal,
celebrated the outcome but also recalled their
suffering.
"Do you know why I am called Ifa?" the 19-year-old
asked. "Because I was born in the back of a truck,"
she said, referring to the East German-made IFA
trucks used by the Iraqi military.
"How can I forget what happened? If I forget, my
name reminds me of everything," she said in
Kurdistan's capital of Erbil.
In 2003, members of an Anfal survivors group
contacted her to tell her that her mother's remains
had been found in a mass grave in the desert in
southern Iraq.
The Anfal trial, in which two former military
commanders were also sentenced to death and two
others given life in jail, heard how the remains of
hundreds of Kurdish women and children were found in
mass graves in northern and southern Iraq.
ANIMALS SCREAMING |
Ali Hassan al-Majid, first cousin of executed
dictator Saddam Hussein and also known as 'Chemical
Ali' sentenced to death over Kurdish genocide, AP
Flash
Video - Sharqiya TV |
|
Narkez Aziz, 52, another resident of Erbil, lost her
husband, a son and her brother-in-law in the Anfal
campaign after they were forced from their village
into a detention camp.
"I cannot forget the picture of my brother-in-law.
He died in detention and then the soldiers threw his
body outside the camp. Dogs ate his body," she said.
Despite's Sunday's verdicts, Aziz is still looking
for justice, saying many Kurds collaborated with
Saddam's forces and have not been brought to trial.
"I did not see Ali Hassan al-Majeed or Saddam
Hussein when I was tortured. They were a mixture of
Kurds and Arabs. I want them to be tried too," she
said.
The trial, which opened in August 2006, heard scores
of witnesses describe villages being burned,
thousands of Kurds being taken from their villages
and interned or executed, and bombed from the air
with mustard gas and other nerve agents.
The town of Halabja is a byword for those chemical
attacks, although the March 1988 attack that killed
5,000 residents did not form part of the Anfal
trial.
A few dozen residents gathered in the town's
graveyard
on Sunday after hearing that
Majeed had been sentenced to hang.
Rizgar Latif, 29, who says he lost 25 members of his
family in the gas attack, said he "felt joy" at the
verdicts.
"I remember we were sitting in our home and then we
smelt rotten apples. At first we did not know where
it came from.
Then the smell became very unpleasant.
"We heard the screaming of women and children and
even animals. We started running but people started
falling down, one after the other," he said,
standing in a market in the town.
Nearly 20 years after the Anfal campaign, Kurds say
the memories are still painful but they are not yet
ready to put them to rest. There is even talk that
June 24 will be marked in future years as a holiday,
to remember the day that Kurds say they finally
received their justice.
Reuters
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 