The trial of 'Chemical Ali'

Washington Times ^ | December 20, 2004 | Editorials/Op-Ed section

[Former Military Chick]

On March 16, 1988, 5,000 residents of Halabja, a Kurdish city in eastern Iraq, were killed and 10,000 injured when Saddam Hussein's army attacked with chemical weapons -- perhaps the largest-scale use of such weapons against a civilian population in modern times. That morning, Iraqi Air Force planes bombed the city with a lethal chemical cocktail of mustard gas and sarin, tabun and VX nerve agents. Two days ago, the man accused of overseeing the attack, Gen. Ali Hasan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, appeared before a judicial tribunal in Baghdad. He is likely to go on trial next year for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity in connection with Halabja and a series of other atrocities allegedly carried out by forces under his command.

In Halabja on that terrible day, families hiding in their basements (the safest place to be when Iraqi troops launched conventional artillery attacks) began vomiting and died of suffocation as a result of the chemical weapons attack. As the gas spread, birds began dropping out of trees, cows collapsed and women and children attempting to flee the city went blind. As children fell, their panic-stricken parents abandoned them by the side of the roads leading out of town. Dr. Christine Gosden, a professor of medical genetics at the University of Liverpool in Great Britain, who has visited Halabja to study the effects of chemical weapons, reported that long-term effects of their use include eye and respiratory problems, severe skin problems, mental difficulties, miscarriages and infant deaths.

[Former Military Chick]

Justice cannot come soon enough for these guys.

[Right_in_Virginia]

Amen.

[Rakkasan1]