Hussein on trial for infamous gas attacks

Saddam Hussein, still awaiting the verdict from his first war-crimes trial, this week is again before Iraq's special criminal tribunal, where prosecutors are seeking to prove the most difficult charge in international criminal law: Genocide.

"It's extraordinarily difficult to prove genocide," says Michael Scharf, a Case Western University law professor who helped train judges and prosecutors participating in the Iraqi Special Tribunal. "I believe the Iraqi investigating judges reached the conclusion that if they didn't make the attempt to prosecute him for genocide, he would go down in history as a minor thug and not as a Hitler or a Pol Pot."

Mr. Hussein and six aides are charged in a new trial with crimes connected to his regime's most infamous atrocity. The Anfal Campaign, named after a chapter in the Koran usually translated as "The Spoils of War," led to the deaths of more than 100,000 people – mostly Kurds – according to Human Rights Watch.

The aim was to depopulate a swath of Kurdistan where separatists thrived.

Prosecutors appear confident that they will be able to prove the charge of genocide. In remarks on the opening trial day on Tuesday, lead prosecutor Munqith Farun alleged excesses so great that "it was as if genocide was not enough" to the perpetrators.

But Mr. Scharf says winning a genocide conviction "will be a close call" unless documentary evidence is produced that at least part of Hussein's intent was to destroy the Kurds – rather than to neutralize regime opponents. While Scharf thinks the other charges, like crimes against humanity, will be proven, the fight over the genocide charges is likely to be hard-fought from both sides. "There is no defense they can come up with that justifies the use of chemical weapons on civilians, and his lawyers know that," says Scharf. "But one of their main agendas here is to make sure that Saddam does not go down in history as the first head of state convicted for genocide."

Scharf points out that if Hussein is not convicted of genocide, he could still be convicted of lesser crimes sufficient for life imprisonment or execution.

From 1987 to 1989, and under the command of Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, Iraqi forces bombarded villages with conventional and sometimes chemical weapons then swept through on the ground, rounding up and killing surviving men, and, in some cases, forcing families out of the region, replacing Kurds with ethnic Arabs.

Up to 2,000 villages were razed, and at least 40 chemical attacks recorded. Though the campaign formally opened in 1988, operations with the same objectives began as early as late 1986.

So far, the prosecution is building slowly, with eyewitness accounts from survivors of early attacks.

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