Hussein, his half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti and Iraq’s former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bander were being charged with crimes against humanity following a wave of revenge killings in 1982 in the northern city of Dujail, after an assassination attempt on Hussein. On 5 November, 2006, celebratory gunfire was heard across parts of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, as Hussein and his two former top Iraqi officials were sentenced to death by hanging.
On the day of the sentencing Hussein walked calmly into court wearing his usual dark suit and white shirt, with his Koran in his hand. Judge Rauf Abdel Rahman ordered him to stand as he read out the verdict, but Hussein refused and had to be forcibly removed from his seat by court attendants. As the judge read out the death sentence, Hussein shouted, ‘Allahu Akbar! (God is Great). Long live Iraq! Long live the Iraqi people! Down with the traitors!’
The celebrations in Baghdad were in defiance of a 12-hour curfew that had been placed on city, because of expected retaliatory violence from Hussein’s Sunni Arab supporters. Since the trial began, there has been soaring sectarian violence which has brought Iraq on the brink of civil war. Few Iraqis believe that the verdict will help to ease the conflict in any way, while US President, George Bush, welcomed it as a ‘milestone… to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law’. The question, however, that is in the back of many peoples’ minds, is will his death really bring justice for his hundreds of thousands of victims?
Invasion of Iraq: A War Crime in Itself?
The invasion of Iraq in 2003, codenamed ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’, will always remain a controversial subject and, as more and more hideous pictures and stories were released by the media worldwide, it exposed the horrors that were being inflicted under the name of ‘war’. The invasion of the century officially started on 20 March, with the objective of ‘disarming Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism and to free the Iraqi people’. All good reasons to go to war – but it has since been deemed a violation of international law, breaking the UN Charter. Since the horrific attacks of 11 September, 2001, on the Twin Towers in New York, it is easy to see why the USA wanted to take action in its fight against global terrorism. The wrong weapons in the wrong hands can threaten people worldwide, but what is inconceivable is the treatment of Iraqi civilians and soldiers in the effort to rid the world of these weapons. Pictures that were broadcast on Australian television showed pictures of Iraqi soldiers – naked, wounded, covered with blood, women’s underwear draped over their heads – in painful and degrading positions. Is this really how prisoners of war should be treated? Other footage revealed soldiers brutally assaulting a group of youths, dragging them into a compound and beating them with batons and kicking them until they lost consciousness.
Estimated civilian deaths at the end of the war amounted to 50,000, and many more were made homeless. The subsequent environmental consequences as the result of malnutrition and other serious health problems caused further civilian devastation. This, and the fact that no ‘weapons of mass destruction’ were actually uncovered, has opened arguments that attacking Iraq may have involved committing not only war crimes, but crimes against humanity as well.
According to the terms of the Nuremberg Convention:
The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law: wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or destruction not justified by military necessity.
The Geneva Convention quite clearly states that it is a war crime to launch indiscriminate attacks affecting the civilian population or their property. If this is the case, why do the ordinary people of Iraq still have nightmares about the constant air attacks on their homes during the Iraqi War. Time and time again, US planes bombed peasant villages where they knew full well that there were no military bases. Added to this, the use of depleted uranium causes poisoning by radiation, and this too has destroyed the lives of untold numbers of civilians and soldiers alike. For example,
13 members of staff at the Basra Training Hospital, who were all present when the building was bombed with armour-piercing shells covered with uranium, are now all suffering from cancer. The use of depleted uranium is most certainly a war crime, the horrific consequences of which are still to run their course.
The cluster bomb is one of the most heinous, unpredictable and deadly weapons of modern warfare. It is a 4-m (14-ft) weapon that weighs about 453 kg (1,000 lbs). When it explodes it sprays literally thousands of smaller bomblets over a large area. These were dropped on populated areas, not only maiming and killing civilians, but also farm animals and wildlife – in fact, anything they came into contact with. In addition, the small bombs are bright yellow and, because they look like playthings, thousands of children have been killed by dormant bomblets, which then explode spraying shards of metal that can tear through a 6-mm (G-in) sheet of steel. Under the Geneva Convention, it is a war crime to use weapons in the knowledge that they ‘will cause an excessive loss of life or injury to civilians’, which definitely makes cluster bombs criminal weapons.
The Iraqi War was the deadliest campaign for non-combatants since the Vietnam War. Reports that have been gathered from hospitals and morgues show a level of civilian casualties that far exceeds the First Gulf War, which in itself cost more than 5,000 civilian lives.
In November 2004, there was a major assault on the Sunni city of Fallujah when US and Iraqi military forced out the town’s residents, bombed hospitals and buildings, attacked whole neighbourhoods and then denied the entry of relief workers into the area. The attack was so severe it made the Mai Lai massacre that took place in Vietnam seem pale by comparison. Using the deadly Lockheed Ac-130 ‘Spectre’, which is a deadly weapon that pumps out thousands of rounds of high-explosive ammunition every minute, US forces destroyed 10,000 buildings, and as a result made over 100,000 residents homeless.
The day started peacefully when approximately 200 demonstrators turned up outside a school that had been taken over by about 100 US soldiers the previous day. The demonstrators had come in peace to ask the soldiers to leave so that they could reopen the school. The US soldiers claimed that they were fired upon and acted accordingly, but there is absolutely no evidence to corroborate their story. Witnesses have described a scene of complete mayhem, as the soldiers fired on unarmed demonstrators who were fleeing in fright. The road was stained with large patches of blood, and shoes lay discarded as the people ran to get away from the massacre.
There have also been reports that the USA used white phosphorous as a weapon in the Fallujah attack. This would be consistent with the stories that the refugees related afterwards, describing the phosphorous weapons, horribly burnt bodies and fires that were impossible to put out with water. Almost one year after these allegations came to light, a new harrowing documentary entitled Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre was produced, which provided fresh evidence of the use of chemical weapons.