Free Republic

WITH RECENT U.S. and British allegations that shipments of explosives similar to those used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are being shipped into Iraq from Iran for use by the insurgency, it is long past time for American policy-makers to examine the role of Iranian Brigadier General Qassem Suleimani and the Qods (Jerusalem) Force unit under his command in fomenting and facilitating anti-American terrorist activity since the September 11 attacks.The very nature of General Suleimani's position within the IRGC warrants him being on America's radar. As the commander of Qods Force, Suleimani is charged with overseeing the IRGC's...

FAS | Nuke | Guide | Iraq | CW |||| Index | Search | Join FAS Chemical Weapons Programs Iraq started research into the production of chemical weapons agents in the 1970s and started batch production of agents in the early 1980s. At that stage, production was heavily reliant on the import of precursor chemicals from foreign suppliers. In 1982, early in the Iran-Iraq War, the Iraqis used riot control agents to repel Iranian attacks. They progressed to the use of CW agents in mid-1983 with mustard, and in March 1984 with tabun (the first use ever of a nerve...

Reality checks needed during war DON SELLAR Halabja (pop. 80,000) is a small Kurdish city in northern Iraq. On Wednesday, the Star reminded readers that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army killed 5,000 Kurds in a 1988 chemical weapons attack on Halabja near the end of a bloody, eight-year war with Iran. The statement that Saddam was responsible for gassing the Kurds — his own people — was straightforward. Indeed, U.S. President George W. Bush has used similar language about the disaster at Halabja in making a case for a military strike to oust Saddam. Yet the Star also reported, in a...

In the safe haven of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Jews and Israel are remembered fondly,if increasingly vaguely. "THEY CALL That lack of restraint?" the former Iraqi army officer exclaimed, while watching the BBC’s coverage of the Al-Aqsa Intifada on satellite TV last winter. "If this demonstration were held in Baghdad, there’d be 10,000 bodies in the street," said the Arab from Baghdad who now teaches in Iraqi Kurdistan. Almost 4 million people live in the safe haven of northern Iraq. A de facto autonomous region, it has been administered by the Kurds since 1991 when Saddam Hussein withdrew his administration in ...

Arabism's racism against Kurds, Ba'athism, Saddam, gas, Halabja, Chemical Ali, etc. Halabja: The Racism of so-called Arab Intellectuals towards Kurds ...Mr. Al-Obaidi starting with wrong information on Halabja, which Halabja was not and is not a village. Halabja was and is a large Town. If not so, the Racist ...http://www.wadinet.de/news/iraq/newsarticle.php?id=569 KurdishMedia.com: News about Kurds and Kurdistan, 2 May 2009 ... The Arab League as a useless ideological racist Arabist institution ....http://www.kurdmedia.com/article.aspx?id=9285 Ali Hassan al-Majid, notorious for commanding the use of weapons of mass destruction against civilians in Kurdistan in 1988, has been sentenced to death again. This time the death...

Saddam Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, who was hanged Monday, ordered the infamous poison gas attack on the northern Iraqi Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988 that killed 5,000 people and earned him the chilling moniker "Chemical Ali." Mr. Majid was executed a week after he received his fourth death sentence on Jan. 17, the final one for the Halabja attack. He bore a striking resemblance to Mr. Hussein and was one of the most brutal members of the dictator's inner circle. The general led sweeping military campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s that claimed tens of thousands of lives–wiping...

A well-known face of the former government of Saddam Hussein widely known as Chemical Ali was executed Monday for ordering a gas attack on a Kurdish village in northern Iraq and for his role in other attacks that became notorious symbols of Mr. Hussein’s tenure. An Iraqi court had sentenced the man, Ali Hassan al-Majid, to death by hanging last week. He is known here as Chemical Ali because of the attack on the village of Halabja, in which more than 5,000 Kurds died. “I congratulate the Iraqi people for this sentence,” said a lawmaker, Safia Suhail. It was Mr....

BAGHDAD — Saddam Hussein's notorious cousin "Chemical Ali" was convicted Sunday of crimes against humanity and received a death sentence for his involvement in a poison gas attack on Halabja. Families of some victims in court cheered when the guilty verdict against Ali Hassan al-Majid was handed down in a trial over one of the worst poisonous gas attacks against civilians. He has already received previous death sentences for atrocities committed during Saddam's rule, particularly in the government's suppression of the Kurds in the late 1980s. Other officials in Saddam's regime received jail terms for their roles in the 1988...

Saddam Hussein's notorious cousin "Chemical Ali" has been sentenced to death by hanging for his involvement in a poison gas attack on the city of Halabja. Families of some of the 5,000 Kurds killed in the 1988 attack cheered when the guilty verdict against Ali Hassan al-Majid was handed down Sunday. Other officials in Saddam's regime, including former Defense Minister Sultan Hashim al-Taie, also received jail terms at the Iraqi High Tribunal. The brutal attack on Halabja close to the Iranian border 22 years ago killed mostly women and children through a series of mustard and nerve gas bombings by...

HALABJA, Iraq — Six families nervously awaited the DNA tests on the young man who returned from Iran. They wondered: Could this be their son who was just an infant in 1988 and somehow lived through a deadly chemical attack by Saddam Hussein's regime? There was absolute silence as the judge announced the lab results. The man, who called himself Ali, was deemed to be the sole surviving child of 58-year-old Fatima Mohammed Salih, who had lost her husband and all her other six children in the poison gas clouds that covered the mostly Kurdish city of Halabja.

A MAN suspected of helping former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein commit war crimes and genocide by supplying him with materials for chemical weapons, has been arrested by the Netherlands authorities. Prosecutors said the 62-year-old man, identified as Frans van Anraat by Dutch television, was arrested at his Amsterdam home on Monday as he prepared to leave the Netherlands. "According to the United Nations, the Dutchman is one of the most important middlemen in Iraq’s acquisition of chemical material," Dutch prosecutors said in a statement. "The man is suspected of supplying thousands of tonnes of raw materials for chemical weapons between...

HALABJA, Iraq - A cloud still hangs over Halabja. Twenty-one years after the cityÂ’s history was written in deadly vapor, the effects of one of IraqÂ’s most infamous days is evident in vacant eyes, still-abandoned farm fields, scarred bodies. On Monday, mourners sat on grave sites, mostly in ones and twos, intact families being a luxury here. They cried softly, stared into space as if still not believing their fate. "ItÂ’s been 21 years, but we feel suffering every day," said Khadija Mohammed, dabbing her eyes while leaning on the mass grave site where the bodies of her seven children...

A Kurdish author with asylum in Norway was sentenced in absentia in Iraq last month to six months imprisonment for blasphemy. Two years ago author Mariwan Halabjaee wrote "Sex, sharia and women in the history of Islam". Here he wrote that the prophet Mohammed had 19 wives, married a nine-year-old when he was aged 54 and that he took part in murder and rape. Last month a court in Halabja convicted him of blasphemy in absentia. Halabjaee has lived in hiding in Norway for one and a half years. The sentence states that he should be arrested upon his return...

KURDS VS ARAB 'PALESTINIANS' IT PAYS TO BE ILLEGITIMATE & MURDEROUS "PALESTINIAN" THAN TO BE A LIGITIMATE PEACEFUL KURD   Dec. 2007   As the world's about to give yet another state [Jordan ain't enough?] for the [group of immigrant Arabs into Israel that call themselves as] "Palestinians", that have never behaved and do not merely fight for a 'homeland' which Israel was never theirs anyhow, but have their goal of eliminating Israel, ethnic cleansing and racist genocide, the poor Kurds still sink under oppression by Turkey, by Arab racism in: Syria, Iraq, and by Islamic fascists regime of Iran.   __________________________________________________________________________   THE KURDS REAL...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 23 — Defense lawyers for Saddam Hussein accused a former Kurdish militant of treason on Wednesday, arguing on the third day of Mr. Hussein’s genocide trial that chemical attacks on Kurds were legitimate acts against local militias conspiring with Iran. The emerging strategy — evident in comments from lawyers and two of Mr. Hussein’s six co-defendants — came on a day filled with continued testimony about Kurdish suffering during the Anfal military campaign against northern villages in 1988. The court adjourned until Sept. 11 at the request of defense lawyers who said they needed more time to...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Cursing Saddam Hussein, a Kurdish woman told the former Iraqi leader's genocide trial on Wednesday she was horribly burned after aircraft bombed her mountain village with chemical weapons. "I lost my sight. My children lost their sight ... My house was razed to the ground. May God blind them all," said Adiba Owla Bayez, pointing at the former Iraqi president and his six co-defendants on the third day of the trial. Describing a spring evening in 1987, the 45-year-old mother of five said aircraft dropped bombs behind her house and she had immediately noticed a difference from...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi Kurd told Saddam Hussein's genocide trial on Tuesday how jets dropped poison gas smelling of rotten apples on his mountain village and aides to the ousted leader defended his campaign against Kurdish rebels. Taking the stand in Baghdad on the second day of the second capital trial the former president has faced, first witness Ali Mustafa Hama said: "Birds were returning to their nests. I saw eight to 12 jets patrolling the sky. There was greenish smoke from the bombs. There was a smell of rotten apple or garlic. "People were vomiting ... We were...

DOHUK: "Son of a donkey". "Son of a whore". The men in this Kurdish cafe in northern Iraq hurled their curses at the television screen as it showed Saddam Hussein in court in live coverage of his trial for genocide yesterday. As another spat in contempt, others shouted "bastard", "swine", at the appearance of Saddam's cousin, Ali Mahjid, or "Chemical Ali", also charged with genocide in the killing of around 100,000 of their people and destruction of 3,000 villages, notably using chemical weapons. "We are happy to see our sworn enemy Saddam before a court," said Walid Khaled, 30, whose...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraq tribunal announced new criminal charges against Saddam Hussein and six others Tuesday, accusing them of genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from a 1980s crackdown against Kurds that included the gassing of thousands of civilians. The move, tantamount to an indictment under the Iraqi legal system, paves the way for a second trial of the ousted ruler. Saddam already is being tried in the killings of more than 140 Shiites in a town north of Baghdad. Under Iraqi law, the second trial could begin in at least 45 days. Investigative judge Raid Juhi said the...

<p>BASRA, Iraq (AP) - Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed ``Chemical Ali'' by opponents of the Iraqi regime for ordering a poison gas attack that killed thousands of Kurds, has been found dead, a British officer said Monday.</p> <p>Maj. Andrew Jackson of the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment told The Associated Press that his superiors had confirmed the death of the man who is also President Saddam Hussein's first cousin.</p> <p>Jackson said the body was found along with that of his bodyguard and the head of Iraqi intelligence services in Basra.</p>