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Saddam goes on trial for 1982 massacre
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-19 19:11
Saddam was ousted after U.S.-led forces swept into Iraq in March 2003 and
marched in to Baghdad. He fled the capital and was on the run for nearly eight
months, until American forces found in him hiding in a cellar in a rural area
outside his hometown of Tikrit north of Baghdad on Dec. 13, 2003.
He has been held since in a U.S. detention facility at Baghdad International
Airport.
Prosecutors are preparing other cases to bring to trial against Saddam and
his officials — including for the Anfal Operation, a military crackdown on the
Kurds in the late 1980s that killed some 180,000 people; the suppression of
Kurdish and Shiite revolts in 1991; and the deaths of 5,000 Kurds in a 1988
poison gas attack on the village of Halabja.
If a death sentence is issued in the Dujail case, it is unclear whether it
would be carried out regardless of whether Saddam is involved in other trials.
He can appeal a Dujail verdict, but if a conviction and sentence are upheld, the
sentence must be carried out within 30 days. A stay could be granted to allow
other trials to proceed.
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