Iraq
Atrocities attributed to Saddam Hussein and his regime
By Wire services
Published December 15, 2003
Attacks on Iraqi Kurds
From 1977 to 1987, between 4,500 and 5,000 Kurdish villages in northern Iraq were destroyed and the population placed in "resettlement camps." As many as 50,000 Kurds died. In the spring of 1987, thousands of Kurds were killed by chemical and conventional bombs. In at least 40 cases, Gen. Ali Hasan al-Majid, "Chemical Ali," used chemical weapons to kill or chase Kurds from villages. In 1988, as many as 5,000 Kurds were killed and 10,000 injured in Halabja. During the Anfal campaign, from February to September 1988, Iraqi soldiers rounded up more than 100,000 Kurds, mostly men and boys, and executed them. More than 1-million Kurds fled and tens of thousands were killed or imprisoned when Iraq crushed an uprising after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Kurdish officials say that around 200,000 have been forcibly evicted from areas that were under Hussein's control.
1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War
As early as 1983, Iraq used poison gas against Iranian troops. In 1988, Hussein reportedly used chemical weapons in a lightning attack to retake the vital Faw Peninsula. An estimated 20,000 Iranians were killed by Iraqi mustard gas or by the nerve agents tabun and sarin during the war.
Expulsion of minorities from Kirkuk
Beginning in 1991, more than 120,000 Kurds, Turkmen and Assyrians were expelled from this oil-rich northern city, to be replaced by Arab families resettled from southern Iraq.
Repression of Marsh Arabs and other Shiite Muslims
During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq's Sunni-dominated regime arrested thousands of Shiite Muslims on charges of supporting the 1979 Iranian Revolution; many have never been accounted for. Nearly 500,000 Shiites fled to Iran. After the Gulf War, Iraqi forces shelled and shot thousands of Shiites who were hiding in the country's southern marshlands after a failed revolt. Hussein also razed towns and drained marshlands. Thousands of Shiites, including hundreds of clerics and their students, were imprisoned without charge, "disappeared" or were executed. Many Shiite shrines and institutions were demolished. Again, thousands of Shiites fled the area, some to Iran. In 1999, Ayatollah al Sayyid Mohammad Sadiq al Sadr, the most senior Shiite cleric in Iraq, was assassinated.
In May 2003, a mass grave was discovered near Mahaweel, 60 miles south of Baghdad. Most bodies appear to have been killed after a 1991 Shiite revolt. The remains of other Shiites killed after a 1999 rebellion have been discovered near Basra.
Large-scale "disappearances' and torture
An estimated 300,000 Iraqi citizens have vanished without a trace, many presumed dead. The U.N. Commission on Human Rights condemned the Iraqi regime in 2001 for "widespread, systematic torture and the maintaining of decrees prescribing cruel and inhuman punishment as a penalty for offenses." Torture methods have included hanging, beating, rape and burning alive. The 2001 U.S. Department of State Human Rights Report says the government "killed and tortured persons suspected of - or related to persons suspected of - economic crimes, military desertion and a variety of other activities. Security forces routinely tortured, beat, raped and otherwise abused detainees." It accused the regime of killing inmates to reduce prison overcrowding and executing prostitutes.
1990 invasion of Kuwait
Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990 over an oil and land dispute and then annexed the country. Occupying forces brutalized civilians; they tortured and summarily executed detainees. Retreating Iraqi troops looted Kuwait City and seized hundreds of Kuwaitis, taking them back to Baghdad. Iraqis also destroyed more than 700 oil wells and opened pipelines to let oil pour into the Persian Gulf and other water sources. The spill damaged water desalination plants and Kuwaiti fishing grounds and has left areas of Kuwait lifeless a decade later. The U.S. military maintains that Hussein's tactic of using human shields during the Gulf War was part of a strategy that included putting military arsenals beneath schools, mosques, orphanages and cultural sites so that an attacker would also kill civilians.
Death row prisoners
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations that sources have said Iraq experimented on human beings to perfect biological or chemical weapons. "A source said that 1,600 death row prisoners were transferred in 1995 to a special unit for such experiments."
Rules of war
The U.S. military is investigating whether Iraqi forces executed or mistreated U.S. soldiers when a convoy was ambushed March 23 near Nasiriyah. British officials have accused Hussein's paramilitary forces of firing on civilians attempting to flee Basra. Both U.S. and British forces accused Iraqi forces under Hussein of taking off their uniforms and dressing as civilians while still combatants, of appearing to surrender and then attacking, and of firing on civilians.
- Information from the Human Rights Watch, U.S. State Department, Times files, BBC News, Associated Press and New York Times was included in this report.
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