IRAQ: Dujail Massacre: Saddam and seven others are charged with ordering and overseeing the killing of more than 140 Shia men from Dujail after an attack on the presidential motorcade as it passed through the village, 60 km (37 miles) north of Baghdad, in July 1982. The retribution is alleged to have included jailing hundreds of women and children from the town for years in internment camps, and destroying the date palm groves that sustained the local economy and were the families' livelihood.
Investigative judges are also pursuing the following criminal cases, for which Saddam could be tried:
Invasion of Kuwait: Saddam is accused of violating international law by ordering the invasion of Kuwait in August, 1990. A US-led coalition demanded Iraq's withdrawal and went to war on January 17th, 1991, after Saddam refused to comply with UN resolutions. The Gulf War ended on February 28th after Iraq's expulsion from its southern neighbour.
During the occupation, Iraqi soldiers are alleged to have tortured and summarily executed prisoners, looted Kuwait City and taken hundreds of Kuwaiti captives back to Baghdad. Iraqi soldiers also set fire to more than 700 oil wells and opened pipelines to let oil pour into the Gulf and other water sources.
Political repression: Saddam is accused of the brutal suppression of uprisings by majority Shias in southern Iraq and ethnic Kurds in the north, who revolted after the Gulf War ended in 1991. Scores of mass graves south of Baghdad are said to contain the bodies of Shias slaughtered in the crackdown. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled to Iran and Turkey and there are Kurdish mass graves in the north and in deserted areas of the south.
Marsh Arabs: The Iraqi army, under Saddam's orders, is alleged to have systematically destroyed the livelihood of Iraq's ancient Marsh Arab people, who have inhabited huge marshlands in the southeast of the country, at the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, for nearly 5,000 years, by draining the marshlands.
Saddam accused the Marsh Arabs of desertion and fighting against his forces during the 1980-88 war with Iran, of harbouring criminals and dissenters against his rule and of joining the Shia uprising in 1991.
Kurdish genocide and ethnic cleansing: Iraqi government forces launched a drive in 1987 and 1988 to reassert government control over Kurdish areas in the north. The campaign, called "Anfal" or "Spoils of War", saw entire villages flattened, farming destroyed and inhabitants forcibly removed.
Kurdish authorities say hundreds of thousands of Kurds were displaced and tens of thousands killed and buried in mass graves. One of the most notorious events was an attack on the Kurdish village, Halabja, in 1988, when as many as 5,000 people were killed in one day by a mustard and nerve gas attack.
Political murders: Saddam and his security forces have been accused of numerous politically motivated murders and other human rights abuses, including the execution of five Shia religious leaders in 1974, the murder of thousands of members of the Kurdish Barzani clan in 1983, and the assassinations of political activists during his decades in power.
Evidence has emerged of 270 mass graves across Iraq which are believed to hold the remains of possibly tens of thousands of people, including Shias, Kurds, and political opponents.
- (Reuters)