Free Republic

A Kurdish author with asylum in Norway was sentenced in absentia in Iraq last month to six months imprisonment for blasphemy. Two years ago author Mariwan Halabjaee wrote "Sex, sharia and women in the history of Islam". Here he wrote that the prophet Mohammed had 19 wives, married a nine-year-old when he was aged 54 and that he took part in murder and rape. Last month a court in Halabja convicted him of blasphemy in absentia. Halabjaee has lived in hiding in Norway for one and a half years. The sentence states that he should be arrested upon his return...

KURDS VS ARAB 'PALESTINIANS' IT PAYS TO BE ILLEGITIMATE & MURDEROUS "PALESTINIAN" THAN TO BE A LIGITIMATE PEACEFUL KURD   Dec. 2007   As the world's about to give yet another state [Jordan ain't enough?] for the [group of immigrant Arabs into Israel that call themselves as] "Palestinians", that have never behaved and do not merely fight for a 'homeland' which Israel was never theirs anyhow, but have their goal of eliminating Israel, ethnic cleansing and racist genocide, the poor Kurds still sink under oppression by Turkey, by Arab racism in: Syria, Iraq, and by Islamic fascists regime of Iran.   __________________________________________________________________________   THE KURDS REAL...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 23 — Defense lawyers for Saddam Hussein accused a former Kurdish militant of treason on Wednesday, arguing on the third day of Mr. Hussein’s genocide trial that chemical attacks on Kurds were legitimate acts against local militias conspiring with Iran. The emerging strategy — evident in comments from lawyers and two of Mr. Hussein’s six co-defendants — came on a day filled with continued testimony about Kurdish suffering during the Anfal military campaign against northern villages in 1988. The court adjourned until Sept. 11 at the request of defense lawyers who said they needed more time to...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Cursing Saddam Hussein, a Kurdish woman told the former Iraqi leader's genocide trial on Wednesday she was horribly burned after aircraft bombed her mountain village with chemical weapons. "I lost my sight. My children lost their sight ... My house was razed to the ground. May God blind them all," said Adiba Owla Bayez, pointing at the former Iraqi president and his six co-defendants on the third day of the trial. Describing a spring evening in 1987, the 45-year-old mother of five said aircraft dropped bombs behind her house and she had immediately noticed a difference from...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi Kurd told Saddam Hussein's genocide trial on Tuesday how jets dropped poison gas smelling of rotten apples on his mountain village and aides to the ousted leader defended his campaign against Kurdish rebels. Taking the stand in Baghdad on the second day of the second capital trial the former president has faced, first witness Ali Mustafa Hama said: "Birds were returning to their nests. I saw eight to 12 jets patrolling the sky. There was greenish smoke from the bombs. There was a smell of rotten apple or garlic. "People were vomiting ... We were...

DOHUK: "Son of a donkey". "Son of a whore". The men in this Kurdish cafe in northern Iraq hurled their curses at the television screen as it showed Saddam Hussein in court in live coverage of his trial for genocide yesterday. As another spat in contempt, others shouted "bastard", "swine", at the appearance of Saddam's cousin, Ali Mahjid, or "Chemical Ali", also charged with genocide in the killing of around 100,000 of their people and destruction of 3,000 villages, notably using chemical weapons. "We are happy to see our sworn enemy Saddam before a court," said Walid Khaled, 30, whose...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraq tribunal announced new criminal charges against Saddam Hussein and six others Tuesday, accusing them of genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from a 1980s crackdown against Kurds that included the gassing of thousands of civilians. The move, tantamount to an indictment under the Iraqi legal system, paves the way for a second trial of the ousted ruler. Saddam already is being tried in the killings of more than 140 Shiites in a town north of Baghdad. Under Iraqi law, the second trial could begin in at least 45 days. Investigative judge Raid Juhi said the...

<p>BASRA, Iraq (AP) - Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed ``Chemical Ali'' by opponents of the Iraqi regime for ordering a poison gas attack that killed thousands of Kurds, has been found dead, a British officer said Monday.</p> <p>Maj. Andrew Jackson of the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment told The Associated Press that his superiors had confirmed the death of the man who is also President Saddam Hussein's first cousin.</p> <p>Jackson said the body was found along with that of his bodyguard and the head of Iraqi intelligence services in Basra.</p>

Saddam's nephew finds sanctuary in Syria By Con Coughlin in Baghdad (Filed: 18/05/2003) A leading member of Saddam Hussein's family has been discovered living in Damascus under the protection of the Syrian government after fleeing Iraq last week, The Telegraph can reveal. Fatiq al-Majid, one of Saddam's nephews, entered Syria last Monday after leaving Iraq at the al-Rabie'a checkpoint, which is under the control of American troops. Majid was given a Syrian visa and made his way to Damascus, where he is now living in exile. Majid confirmed his presence in Damascus when contacted by telephone by The Telegraph last...

THE HAGUE,(Reuters) - A Dutch businessman accused of selling chemicals to Iraq knowing Saddam Hussein would use them for poison gas attacks went on trial in the Netherlands on Monday on charges of complicity in war crimes and genocide. Frans van Anraat, 63, is charged with supplying thousands of tonnes of agents for poison gas used by Saddam's military in Iraq's 1980-1988 war against Iran and against its own Kurdish population, including an attack on the town of Halabja in 1988. Prosecutor Fred Teeven told a pre-trial hearing that Van Anraat continued to supply chemicals after the Halabja attack, which...

One of Saddam Hussein's closest aides, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, died of cancer, a website run by members of Iraq's former ruling Baath party says. His death was first announced by the Baath party on Friday, but no details were given then. He had leukaemia. Douri, 63, was the most senior figure in the former regime still at large. The US had offered a $10m reward for information leading to his capture. In recent years he was accused of financing insurgent groups in Iraq. The BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad says the Americans regarded Douri as their most wanted man, after...

Vienna - Iran, and not Saddam Hussein, was responsible for the killing of tens of thousands of Kurds and Shiites, said a lawyer for the deposed Iraqi dictator in comments published on Tuesday. Issam Ghazzawi, who was part of Saddam's defence team, told the daily Die Presse that "Iran is responsible for the murders of the Kurds" killed by poison gas in 1988. The lawyer was quoted as saying: "Iraq did not possess poison gas at this time." Ghazzawi reportedly said that Iran also was responsible for the mass killings of Shiites who rose against Saddam in 1991. More than...

NOTE: See Kyle's photos in today's print edition. Friends in the USA: These pictures are from a mission to Halabja, Iraq, we took on Feb. 16, 2005. This is where Saddam Hussein gassed his own people in 1988, killing 5,000 men, women and children. The citizens there treated us as heroes. They wanted our autographs and many pictures made with them. I want you to look ... real green grass, real trees and even snow on the mountaintops. This was the prettiest place we have seen in Iraq. It was over a five hour ride each way on the convoy....

<p>A Netherlands court has opened a pretrial hearing in the case of a Dutch businessman charged with complicity in genocide by selling chemical weapons ingredients to ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.</p> <p>Frans van Anraat appeared Friday in a Rotterdam courtroom. The 62-year-old defendant is accused of exporting tons of chemicals that Iraq used to make weapons over a four-year period beginning in 1984.</p>

Sixteen years after the Kurdish town was hit by a poison gas attack, a man alleged to have supplied the chemicals could be brought to justice. By Amanj Khalil in Sulaimaniyah (ICR No. 95, 27-Dec-04) Alwan Ali has daily reminders of the horrific day in 1988 when she lost seven members of her family members following a chemical attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja. Even now, 16 years on, she still has difficulty breathing and trouble with her eyesight. But for Alwan and thousands of others, closure on the issue could be just around the corner, following the December...

KurdistanObserver.com The Halabja- Falluja Paradox By: Dr. Nazhad Khasraw Hawramany Dec 1, 2004 For an uninformed outsider the names of cities like Halabja and Falluja might be just exotic names for foreign cities like many similar other names all over this planet. For us Kurdistanis and Iraqis, these names have very deep and different meanings, because we are acquainted with the events and stories attached to those cities. It simply tells the story of Kurds and Arabs in Iraq, the story of decades of suffering and genocide on one side and of human cruelty and disregard of human lives on...

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...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) Prosecutors said on Tuesday they will charge a Dutch chemicals dealer as an accomplice to genocide for supplying Saddam Hussein with lethal chemicals used in the 1988 chemical attack on a Kurdish town that killed an estimated 5,000 civilians. Wim de Bruin of the national prosecutor's office said the suspect, who was arrested in Amsterdam on Monday, will face charges ''for violating the laws of war and involvement in genocide.'' Prosecutors said Frans van Anraat, a 62-year-old chemicals dealer, had been a suspect since 1989, when he was arrested in Milan, Italy, at the request of the...

Halabja is a name that triggers a variety of emotions in all Kurds. Indeed, it is one word that may best capture the true depth and depravity of Saddam Hussein’s genocidal campaign against the Kurdish people living within Iraq’s borders. On March 16, 1988, an estimated 5,000 civilians were killed and 10,000 injured when Iraqi air forces attacked Halabja with mustard gas and other chemical weapons. This crime is the most infamous and perhaps the most brutal incident of Saddam Hussein’s campaign to eliminate the Kurdish nation. I awoke at 4:45 AM. While the sky was pitch black, the oppressive...

Voigt on America – September 17, 2004 Saddam Hussein’s Genocidal Campaign against the Kurds Steven T. Voigt, Esq. Recently, I have spent considerable time reading about the horrible crimes committed by Saddam Hussein against his own people. As I study accounts of the years of terror under Saddam’s dictatorship, I am horrified and saddened. Saddam’s reign was terrible. Many people suffered from his evil acts, but the Kurds, a distinct people with their own language and culture who live in northern Iraq, were particularly brutalized. My thoughts and prayers go out to these people. They have lost so much, but...

Dozens of bodies have been discovered in a mass grave near the town of Halabja in northern Iraq, the head of a Kurdish anti-chemical weapons campaign group said on Thursday. The burial site -- crammed with dozens of men, women and children in ragged clothes -- was discovered Tuesday during construction on a road between the villages of Abu Obeida and Djellila, said Aras Abed. Abed himself lost 11 members of his family when ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s forces dropped chemical bombs on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988. "The three common graves at this site near Halabja...

THE men and women of Halabja, the little town on Iraq's northeastern frontier devastated with chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein's air force, have no doubt what the ex-dictator's fate should be: a fair trial right here, on the very spot where his darkest deed was carried out. Halabja, deep in Iraq's Kurdish enclave, near the mountain border with Iran, was close to the military frontline between the two warring countries when it was attacked on March 16, 1988, by squadrons of Iraqi fighter jets. Five thousand of its people died in that bombardment and its aftermath; 10,000 more were wounded....

The Washington Timeswww.washingtontimes.com Saddam in the dock wows the town he gassedBy Nicholas BirchTHE WASHINGTON TIMESPublished July 6, 2004 HALABJA, Iraq -- Hama Kerim, a 51-year-old notary in this town where Saddam Hussein gassed 5,000 Kurds to death in 1988, describes seeing the deposed dictator in a courtroom last week as the second-best day of his life.     "Nothing can beat the sight of Saddam being dragged out of his hole by U.S. troops" in December, he said in an interview yesterday.     Mr. Kerim described the carnival atmosphere that descended on the town when the trial began last week. Despite warnings...

Iraqi scarred by gas attacks would like to host `Chemical Ali' trialBY MARK MCDONALDKnight Ridder Newspapers HALABJA, Iraq - (KRT) - Nobody's sure what kind of nerve gas was in that first bomb, the one that flattened the House of Charity mosque. It collapsed the dome and toppled the minaret, and within minutes hundreds of townspeople were twitching and blistering to death in the dust of Mokhtar Street.Some 5,000 people - more than half of them children - were doomed to die in Halabja on that warm Wednesday morning on March 16, 1988. On that day, Saddam Hussein's air...

Lakhdar Brahimi is United Nations Special envoy in Iraq. He is an Arab chauvinist and anti-Semitic. He was pro-Saddam when he was Minister for Foreign Affairs of Algeria from 1991 to 1993 and Under-Secretary-General of the League of Arab States from 1984 to 1991. Not only did Brahimi endorse Saddam Hussein and remain a close ally to him, he also denied that Saddam Hussein, the glory of Arab Leader as he described him, had ever used chemical weapons. Brahimi announced on French radio that "The great poison in the region is this Israeli policy of domination and the suffering imposed...

The legacy of a mass murderer.A field outside Baghdad THE DEAD DON'T TALK in Iraq but their graves do. In northern Iraq, a grave was unearthed last July with several thousand bodies, mostly women and children. From the bullet holes in the top of the skulls, it was clear the deaths weren't natural. The victims had been shot from above while kneeling or after being forced into a mass grave. They had personal household items with them like baskets. They had their clothes on. These were clues that helped identify their hometown and led to the conclusion they'd been compelled...

<p>IN Iraq on Good Friday, I thought of the film "The Passion." I am a Christian. The film brought me close to tears. But not for quite the reason Mel Gibson intended.</p> <p>Watching the grotesque suffering on the screen, my thoughts were less of Christ than of what human beings do to one another. I didn't really see the Jerusalem of 2,000 years ago. I saw Auschwitz, Rwanda, Cambodia, the Gulag . . .</p>

Sixteen years ago today, 5,000 innocent Iraqi civilians perished under a barrage of mustard gas; nerve agents sarin, tabun and VX; and possibly cyanide. The brutal attack, launched by their own government, earned Saddam Hussein the dubious distinction of becoming the first world leader in modern times to have used chemical weapons on his own people. The victims of the attack were residents of Halabja, 150 miles northeast of Baghdad and just south of the Iranian border. Three-quarters of them were women and children. The chemical attacks on what has come to be known as "Bloody Friday" were the most...

Howard Dean: Saddam did not commit genocide in the last 10 years

<p>WASHINGTON -- For 15 years, Khurmal was a silent town. The Islamic Group of Kurdistan, an Islamist organization that controlled the town and others in northern Iraq near the Iran border, had forbidden people from playing or listening to music.</p>

HALABJA, Iraq (AP) - Amna Abdulqader lost two sons, a daughter, a daughter-in-law and three grandchildren when bombs carrying poisonous gases fell in a chemical attack Saddam Hussein ordered on this Kurdish town - killing 5,000 people. She and other survivors of the March 16, 1988, attack say the former dictator must face justice in an Iraqi court that could impose the death penalty. "If he had fallen into my hands, I would have bitten off his flesh with my teeth," Amna Abdulqader said yesterday. Some interim Iraqi leaders have suggested Saddam could be executed as early as this summer....

HALABJA, Iraq - Survivors of the 1988 chemical attack Saddam Hussein ordered on this Kurdish town — killing 5,000 people — say the former dictator must be executed for his crimes against the Iraqi people. For that reason, the people here said in interviews Wednesday, Saddam must not be tried before an international tribunal that would not impose the death penalty. The captured former dictator must face justice in an Iraqi court, they say. Some interim Iraqi leaders have suggested Saddam could be executed as early as this summer. But international human rights organizations reject the death penalty for Saddam...

Comment Free after 50 years of tyranny We may have fought for the wrong reasons, but there is more good than bad in post-Saddam Iraq Julie FlintSunday October 5, 2003The Observer Half a century ago, in a blistering denunciation of the Korean war, the British war correspondent Reginald Thompson wrote: 'It was clear that there was something profoundly disturbing about this campaign and something profoundly disturbing about its commander-in-chief.' Thompson's words could equally well apply to the US-led campaign in Iraq and its commander-in-chief: George W. Bush, head of a cabal that seeks to install a client regime in...

HALABJA, Iraq, Sept. 15 -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell asserted today that a 1988 poison gas attack that killed an estimated 5,000 Kurds in this farming town nestled in Iraq's barren northern mountains was ample evidence that former president Saddam Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction and justified the U.S. decision to go to war. In an emotional defense of the invasion of Iraq, Powell visited a mass grave site, toured a new museum commemorating the attacks and listened as Kurdish political leaders proclaimed that the Halabja massacre provided sufficient legitimacy to go to war. "If you...

Gassed town has no doubts on US claims [of Iraqi WMD's] HALABJA, Iraq (AFP) - If sceptics doubt US claims that Saddam Hussein was a ticking bomb with weapons of mass destruction, this Kurdish town showed it had 5,000 reasons to believe. Halabja gave a hero's welcome to US Secretary of State Colin Powell as he flew in trumpeting the US victory in ousting Saddam, accused by Washington of developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. No stocks have been found but Esmail Abdulrahim Saleh and others here needed no convincing: they remember the 5,000 Halabja residents gassed to death in...

US Secretary of State Colin Powell has visited the site of one of Saddam Hussein's worst atrocities, at the end of a two-day visit to Iraq. Mr Powell took part in the opening of a memorial and a museum in the northern town of Halabja, where in 1988 about 5,000 Iraqi Kurds were gassed in a single day by the former regime. He told the gathering of several hundred that the man believed to have ordered the attack - Ali Hassan al-Majid or "Chemical Ali", who is currently in US custody - "will stay in jail until an Iraqi court...

HALABJA, Iraq (AP) - Secretary of State Colin Powell visited a mass grave Monday to highlight perhaps the single biggest human-rights abuse of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime - the chemical weapons murder of some 5,000 people in March 1988. Powell flew here from Baghdad to take part in the formal dedication of a memorial and museum to commemorate those who lost their lives here 15 years ago. Powell traveled in a military C-130 transport aircraft to Kirkut, then transferred to a helicopter, flying over dusty plains and barren hills to get to this Kurdish-dominated town. The Halabja massacre has...

Saddam Cousin 'Chemical Ali' Caught in Iraq TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - Ali Hassan al-Majid, a feared cousin of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) nicknamed "Chemical Ali" for his use of poison gas in attacks, has been captured by U.S. forces in Iraq (news - web sites), the U.S. military said on Thursday. "We do have him and he was captured alive," U.S. Central Command spokesman Lt. Ryan Fitzgerald told Reuters. Fitzgerald said no details were available on the arrest, where it took place, or whether Majid was injured. Majid was No. 5 on a U.S. list of the 55...

<p>Baghdad -- Like so many Iraqis these days, Chedha al Awsi feels betrayed and confused.</p> <p>On a computer screen before her, poorly recorded footage shows half a dozen laughing soldiers of Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard as they beat and kick civilian men kneeling on the ground, their hands bound behind their backs.</p>

MANQOUBEH, Iraq (AP) - While the horrific images of streets strewn with bodies shook the world, many Iraqi Arabs remain unaware of Saddam Hussein's gas attack that killed thousands of Iraqi Kurds 15 years ago. And those Arabs who heard rumors of the slaughter in the northern city of Halabja say they did not believe them at the time. Some remain unconvinced today. The chemical attack on the Kurds stands as one of the most egregious examples of Saddam's brutality against his own people. It was cited by President Bush as proof that Saddam had the willingness and ability to...

MANQOUBEH, Iraq April 27 — While the horrific images of streets strewn with bodies shook the world, many Iraqi Arabs remain unaware of Saddam Hussein's gas attack that killed thousands of Iraqi Kurds 15 years ago.And those Arabs who heard rumors of the slaughter in the northern city of Halabja say they did not believe them at the time. Some remain unconvinced today.The chemical attack on the Kurds stands as one of the most egregious examples of Saddam's brutality against his own people. It was cited by President Bush as proof that Saddam had the willingness and ability to use...

Nizar Khazraji, a prominent Iraqi general who defected to the West, was assassinated Monday on his way to attend a U.S.-called meeting of opposition groups in the southern city of Nassiriya. Khazraji was sometimes mentioned as a possible successor to Saddam Hussein. In February last year, London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat quoted opposition sources in Syria as saying the US had chosen Khazraji to run Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam. The CIA was reported to have helped him escape to Kuwait from house arrest in Denmark, where prosecutors were investigating his alleged role in gas attacks on the Iraqi Kurds....

The streets of the Kurdish capital, Erbil, filled with American, Iraqi and Kurdish flags yesterday as tens of thousands took to the street to celebrate the demise of the regime. Kurdish Iraqis celebrate in the northern Iraqi town of Arbil "Saddam, the criminal, the murderer, the savage, wild animal is gone," shouted a widow, Fauziya Ali, 45. "The black criminal, perpetrator of Halabja, is dead," she said. Halabja, a town that bore the brunt of Saddam Hussein's genocidal attempt to quell the Kurds with nerve agents and chemical weapons, is foremost among the reasons that the Kurdish people hunger for...

GOTTA SEE THIS - War for Enduring Freedom 4/12/03 - Mosul, Jabal Maqlub, Ghazel, Khaneqin, Arbil, Kalak, Kifry, Hadithah dam, Shamamer, Halabja, Chamchamal, Kirkuk, Altun Kupri, Tuz Khurmatu, Dohuk BREAKING: Mosul - Iraqis surrender BREAKING: Jabal Maqlub - SF special contributions BREAKING: Ghazel - Bridge destroyed by Iraqis, but captured BREAKING: Khaneqin - liberated from Saddam BREAKING: Arbil - freedom with the help of the USA BREAKING: Arbil - More Iraqi atropine injectors captured BREAKING: Kalak - freedom after airstrikes BREAKING: Kifry - freedom after Iraqi rockets BREAKING: Hadithah dam - champion US Special Forces secured it BREAKING: Shamamer -...

HALABJA, Iraq: Tears streamed down Fakhradeen Saleem's face on Wednesday as he watched television images of Saddam Hussein's government crumbling in Baghdad. Listening to his devastating story of loss at the hands of the Baathist administration, it was not hard to see why. The softly-spoken teacher, 54, took nearly two hours to explain what happened in this run-down northern Iraqi town on March 16, 1988, a date etched in the memory of millions of Kurds. On that day Iraqi warplanes roared over the town, dropping chemical weapons including nerve agents which killed 5,000 people in the dying days of the...

U.S. officials tell NBC News they believe an overnight airstrike has killed the man known as “Chemical Ali,” a cousin of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and commander of Iraq’s southern front. Meanwhile, leaders of the ruling Baath Party in Iraq’s second city Basra fear public reprisals and were seeking to negotiate a surrender to British military forces besieging the city, a pan-Arab newspaper reported. MILITARY SOURCES told NBC News that bomb damage assessments and other intelligence indicate that the strike killed Ali Hassan al-Majeed and others, although his death has yet to be formally confirmed on the ground. “The strike...

GOTTA SEE THIS - War for Enduring Freedom 4/3/03 - Rescues, Najaf, Nasiriyah, Arbil, Umm Qasr BREAKING: Freed behind Enemy Lines - POW Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch BREAKING: Freed in Az Zubaya - Black Watch BREAKING: Baghdad - Republican Guard palace + BREAKING: Najaf - cache of Iraqi weapons from Saddam's military school BREAKING: Nasiriyah - Battle lines BREAKING: Nasiriyah - captured Iraqi military base BREAKING: Nasiriyah - WMD-suits, masks and ammunition which were found at military installation BREAKING: Nasiriyah - freed Iraqi bedouins BREAKING: Arbil - Atropine injectors left by retreating Iraqis BREAKING: Halabja - New sheriff in town...

HALABJA, Iraq - U.S. specialists have discovered evidence that a Kurdish Islamic militant group that the Bush administration has linked to al-Qaida was concocting chemical weapons in the mountains of northeastern Iraq, a U.S. military commander said Tuesday. The special forces soldiers also found recipes for three forms of chlorine gas and for ricin, a deadly toxin derived from castor beans, American intelligence officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. U.S. aircraft, 100 American special forces and more than 8,000 Kurdish fighters on Friday swept the Ansar al Islam ("Partisans of Islam") militants out of the sliver of territory...

WASHINGTON - One of Saddam Hussein's most feared and hated hatchet men oversees the forces that are defending the southern front in Iraq. Ali Hassan al Majid, a cousin of the Iraqi leader, earned his nickname, "Chemical Ali," by overseeing the fatal gassing of thousands of Iraqi Kurds. He may be behind the suicide attack on a U.S. Army checkpoint that killed five people Saturday and the recent shooting of civilians who were trying to flee Basra. "He has been involved in some of Iraq's worst crimes, including genocide and crimes against humanity," Kenneth Roth, the head of New...

When Mazin Alkabbi awoke from an anesthesia-induced slumber on a morning in 1994, Iraqi authorities gave him grim news: He had been in a car accident and lost his ears. Alkabbi knew better. There had been no accident. His ears had been surgically removed because he fled the military when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991. Just hours before the surgery, he was arrested at his home in Basra. Alkabbi, who now lives in Arlington, remembered having his hands tied, being blindfolded and at one point even thinking he might just be questioned and released. His Iraqi identification...