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Backgrounder: Phase Two in the Saddam Trial

Council on Foreign Relations

Author: Lionel Beehner, Staff Writer
August 29, 2006

Introduction

The Iraqi High Criminal Court (IHHC) (PDF), formerly the Iraqi Special Tribunal, is hearing its second case against Saddam Hussein and his top lieutenants. The former Iraqi dictator faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity and is being tried by Iraqis under Iraqi criminal law, not by international judges under international law. Proponents of this approach, including DePaul University's M. Cherif Bassiouni, argue that trying Saddam domestically will "advance the goals of the rule of law in Iraq and help sustain a new era for the Iraqi legal system." Opponents, including a number of global human rights groups, challenge the court's legitimacy, accuse the tribunal of doling out "victors' justice" that could further inflame Saddam's sympathizers, and decry its use of the death penalty. The most recent charge against Saddam involves his order to exterminate tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurds, many of them by chemical gas, in the so-called Anfal campaign in 1988.

What was the Anfal campaign?

In 1988, Saddam Hussein and six of his deputies launched a six-month campaign to push Kurds out of the mountainous areas of northern Iraq. The directive came toward the end of Iraq's war with Iran at a time when Saddam suspected the Kurds of abetting the Iranians. The alleged ethnic-cleansing operation was dubbed Anfal, named after an Arabic term in the Koran that means "the spoils." It resulted in the deaths of at least 50,000 Kurds and scores of mass graves. There are around fifty documented cases of chemical weapons used against the Kurds. "Four thousand villages were buried and wiped off the earth," says Michael A. Newton, a Vanderbilt University law professor.

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Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.