Baghdad
The Iraqi tribunal trying Saddam Hussein charged him this week with attempting genocide against the Kurdish minority during the 1980s. Some 100,000 Kurds, many of them women and children, were killed in a series of massacres, including the notorious 1988 poison-gas attack at Halabja. Several others were also charged, including Ali Hassan al-Majid, aka “Chemical Ali,” a senior Baath Party official accused of overseeing chemical weapons. Saddam already faces the death penalty if found guilty in his current trial, for the 1982 murder of 148 Shiites in Dujail. But many Iraqis, including President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, say they want Saddam to stay alive long enough to face trials for all his ill deeds.
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