Kurds Say Saddam's Hanging Robs Them of
Justice
Sun Jan 7, 2007
By Sherko Raouf
SULAIMANI, (Southern Kurdistan) (Reuters) -
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
Hussein 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 Dec. 30
for crimes against humanity in the killing of 148 Shi'ites 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 on Monday.
Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki rushed
the execution of his former enemy despite calls from U.S. 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 Arbil, said majority Shi'ites, in power since a U.S. invasion ended Saddam's
Sunni-dominated rule, steamrolled 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 Shi'ites 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 Shi'ite officials taunting him
with sectarian slogans on the gallows.
"CHEMICAL ALI"
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.
Anfal, or Spoils of War, was named after a
chapter in the Koran. 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 U.S.-backed court enthralled television audiences, will
diminish interest in the Anfal proceedings.
Prosecutors in Anfal have gathered thousands of
documents and U.S.-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."
