War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

Saddam Hussein seized power in 1979. The list of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Saddam Hussein and his regime is a long one. It includes:

The use of poison gas and other war crimes against Iran and the Iranian people during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Iraq summarily executed thousands of Iranian prisoners of war as a matter of policy.

The "Anfal" campaign in the late 1980's against the Iraqi Kurds, including the use of poison gas on cities. In one of the worst single mass killings in recent history, Iraq dropped chemical weapons on Halabja in 1988, in which as many as 5,000 people — mostly civilians — were killed.

Crimes against humanity and war crimes arising out of Iraq's 1990-91 invasion and occupation of Kuwait.

Crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq. This includes the destruction of over 3,000 villages. The Iraqi government's campaign of forced deportations of Kurdish and Turkomen families to southern Iraq has created approximately 900,000 internally displaced citizens throughout the country.

Crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against Marsh Arabs and Shi'a Arabs in southern Iraq. Entire populations of villages have been forcibly expelled. Government forces have burned their houses and fields, demolished houses with bulldozers, and undertaken a deliberate campaign to drain and poison the marshes. Thousands of civilians have been summarily executed.

Possible crimes against humanity for killings, ostensibly against political opponents, within Iraq.

Holding Saddam Accountable

The United States wants to see Saddam and his close aides investigated, indicted, and if possible, prosecuted by an international tribunal. The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal's May 1999 indictment of Slobodan Milosevic for crimes against the Muslim Kosovar Albanian people shows that when crimes are committed on the scale that Saddam Hussein has committed them, justice should be done not just in the name of the victims, but in the name of all humanity.

The United States is helping international efforts to gather evidence.

The U.S. Government helped human rights and opposition groups collect 5.5 million pages of captured Iraqi documents from the "Anfal" campaign against the Iraqi Kurds in the 1980's. These documents show the routine nature of the atrocities and abuses committed by Saddam Hussein's regime against the Iraqi people. These documents are being catalogued, indexed, and electronically transcribed for use by investigators and prosecutors.

Tens of thousands of pages of Iraqi documents captured during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 are also now being indexed and computerized. The originals themselves will be returned to Kuwait and computerized copies will be made available to human rights groups, scholars, investigators and prosecutors.

The U.S. has large amounts of information on Iraq's campaign to destroy the Southern Marshes and repression of the people of southern Iraq.

We are preserving videotapes of Iraqi war crimes that can be used for eventual prosecution of Iraqi war crimes. The United States also has classified documents, some of which can be declassified and shared with an international tribunal or commission.

Saddam Hussein's Iraq is a brutal police state and so the collection of evidence of the crimes of the regime is difficult to obtain. Opposition groups work with great courage to bring this news to the world. We are working with Iraqi opposition and human rights groups in support of their efforts to collect additional evidence of Saddam's war crimes. Opposition and human rights groups' efforts include:

Locating witnesses to Iraqi war crimes and help build evidence that could be used to justify the arrest of senior Iraqi officials traveling outside the country.

Helping analyze captured Iraqi documents and translate them so that the world can be educated about Iraqi war crimes.

The U.S. Government is providing grants to a number of NGO's working on Iraqi war crimes issues. Grants have been provided for gathering evidence, translating captured Iraqi documents written in Arabic into other languages, making evidence of Iraqi war crimes available on the Internet, and taking steps to preserve written, visual and testimonial evidence of the crimes committed by Saddam Hussein's regime.

International efforts to draw attention to the war crimes record of the Iraqi regime has already begun:

Efforts were made to arrest Izzat Ibrahim, Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, while he was visiting Austria in August of 1999.

A few weeks later, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz decided not to travel to Italy to attend a conference entitled, "Peace, Prosperity, and an End to War." As one human rights group said, "The only suitable venue for Tariq Aziz to express his opinions is that of a courtroom where we will all have a chance to hear about his government's record on peace, prosperity and war."