A chronology of terror under Saddam Hussein

1969: A number of Kurdish villages are bombed with napalm and rockets, resulting in the death of countless women and children. From May 14 – 16 alone, 544 dwellings are destroyed and 65 civilians killed.

1973: Members of the political opposition, including left wing Ba’ath party members, communists, Kurds, Shi’ites and others, are tortured or killed. It is confirmed that in 1969 the former prime minister Albazzaz had his arms and legs broken in prison and lost one eye through beatin. Of previously 130.000 Jews, only 450 are left, and ruthlessly persecuted. 20 Jews who had been missing since 1972, die by torture; an eleven year old Jewish girl, having been tortured and raped for three consecutive days, "admits” to being a member of a Zionist-imperialist spy ring.

1974 - 1976: 291 confirmed cases of executions, including Kurds, communists, Maoists and Nasserists

1975: Concentration camps are built for 14.000 Kurdish Peshmerga. 25.000 Yezidi and 30.000 Kurds from Khanakin are expelled; 250.000 Kurds flee to Iran.

1975 – 1978: 500.000 Kurds are expelled.

1976 – 1988: Murder plots are carried out by Iraqi diplomats and security agents against Iraqi and Kurdish emigrants i.a. in Lausanne (against Ismet Cherif Vanly, a member of theStok of the Society for Threatened Peoples),and also in London, Paris, Vienna, Beirut, Berlin, Khartoum and Modesto, California.

1977: Several hundred Kurds are executed.

1978: 253 Kurds are executed in the prison of Mossul.

By 1987 the number of destroyed Chaldean and Nestorian churches reaches 85.

1980 – 1988: War of aggression against Iran with approximately one million dead.

1981: 300 death sentences are carried out against Kurds and supporters of the Ba’ath party

1982: Execution of 27 Turkmens, 166 Shi’ites and 35 communists.

1983: 300 executions of officers, of deserters, of democrats and Shi’ites.

1984: Hundreds of executions, including pupils and students.

1985: 300 Kurds are murdered, a number of Assyrians and communists executed.

1986: 83 Kurdish students are executed, 25 members of Communist parties, 38 students of PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) and 300 Kurdish children are killed after first being subject to torture with electric shocks and to sexual abuse.

1987: 180 Shi’ites disappear, 360 Kurds, including 17 children, are executed, 40 members of the secret services are poisoned. The Anfal attack begins, with poison gas, deportation and mass shooting of Kurds, Yezidi, Assyro-Chaldeans and others in Northern Iraq.

1988: 8.000 male members of the Barzani tribe are shot; 400 Kurdish civilians who had been injured by airplane attacks are executed in the Tamjaro barracks; 1.000 Kurds are executed in Dohuk; according to various sources the number of victims of the Anfal attack amounts to 60.000 (according to Gutman, "Handbuch Kriegsverbrechen” (Handbook on War Crimes)), 150.000 (according to Professor David McDowall, British Middle East expert), 100.000 (according to the Iraqi responsible for the attack), or up to 182.000 (according to Kurdish and other sources); 5.000 Kurdish, Assyrian and Yezidi villages are destroyed.

1988: Poison gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja with 5.000 victims.

1989: Disappearance of 33 Assyrians; execution of 94 deserters and three generals.

1991: Invasion of Kuwait.

1991: Suppression of the Shi’ite revolt resulting in 60.000 – 100.00 dead – (genocide), according to other estimates in up to 300.000 dead.

1991: Suppression of the Kurdish revolt, approximately 1.5 million Kurds flee into the mountain areas of Turkish and Iranian Kurdistan, tens of thousands of civilians die from the strain. Between March and May thousands of Kurds, Shi’ites and members of other groups are arrested; many, including women and children, are executed after summary proceedings; thousands disappear. In the South about 150 Shi’ite men and youths are executed on March 16 in the garrison base of al-Mahawil.

1992: After the ban on flights over Southern Iraq thousands of Shi’ite civilians – most of whom had not taken part in any fighting – are arrested in the course of a series of arrests; an unknown number of unarmed civilians are executed outside the law.

1992: In March, orders are given to move all the inhabitants of the swamp areas (Marsh Arabs and Shi’ites) to camps especially set up for this purpose outside the swamps.

1992: In May, an army helicopter attacks a wedding party in the Southern province of al’Amara and kills 13 people.

1992: Near Arbil, Sulaimaniya and in other areas mass graves are discovered with the remains of numerous Kurdish villagers and combatants who disappeared while being in the "custody” of the Iraqi authorities; 107 dead discovered near Arbil are found to belong to the 360 Kurds who had survived the chemical weapon attacks, and had been kidnapped and carried off from hospitals in Arbil.

1993: Several attacks by government armed forces with the aim of getting the swamp areas in the South under control; executions of numerous civilians outside the law; up to 8.000 Ma´adan flee from the attacks and as a consequence of the draining of the swamps; an attack carried out on September 26 in the swamps leaves several hundred people dead.

1994: The Revolutionary Council (RCC) introduces cruel forms of punishment such as crosswise amputation of limbs, cutting off of ears or branding; thousands of opposition members, including doctors who refuse to carry out the amputations, are arrested and tortured; members and supporters of the opposition become victims of executions outside the law.

1995: In August the two sons-in-law of Saddam Hussein, lieutenant-general Hussein Kamel al-Hassan al-Majid - formerly the minister of defense and officer in command of the Republican Guards - and his brother, lieutenant-colonel Saddam Kamel, head of the Presidential Guard, flee to Jordan with their wives. Iraqi authorities arrest an unknown number of top members of the military and functionaries of the Ba’ath party who had close contacts with these persons.

1995: Extralegal executions of (supposed) opposition supporters (the exact figure is unknown).

1996: In spite of having been pardoned, Hussein Kamel al-Hassan al-Majid and Saddam Kamel are killed in February, shortly after their return to Iraq.

1996: After an alleged attempt at an uprising, more than 120 army officers are executed in June. The fate of 300 further persons arrested on the same grounds is unclear.

1996: After an alleged attempted insurrection, more than 120 army officers are executed in June. The fate of an additional 300 arrested persons remains unclear.

1996: In August government forces execute, near Arbil, at least 96 members of the oppositional Iraqi National Congress and four member of the Iraqi National Turkmen Party.

1997: During processions on 9 June in Kerbela, hundreds of Shi’ites are arrested, and many killed, as government forces shoot indiscriminately into the crowd.

1997: 14 officers of the secret service, of special units and regular security services as well as former members of the Ba’ath party are executed between July and October on the grounds of having participated in an attempted insurrection and a conspiracy.

1997: Human rights organizations demand that Iraq should provide information about the fate of several hundred thousand persons who "disappeared” since the beginning of the nineteen eighties.

1997: The UN Special Rapporteur for Iraq, Max van der Stoel, reports that more than 1.500 political prisoners have been executed in November and December in the prisons Abu Ghraib and al-Radhwaniya near Baghdad.

1998: According to reports at least 100 political prisoners, including 21 women, were executed in the month of September, and their bodies buried in mass graves.

1999: In October, more than 100 persons are executed in the Abu Ghraib prison, including at least 19 political prisoners.

2000: New types of punishment are introduced, for example execution by beheading, or the cutting out of the tongue, e.g. for the crime of defamation of the president. In February, 38 officers of the Republican Guard are executed on the grounds of a failed attempt on the president’s life.

2000: In continuation of the Arabisation policy it already started as early as 1997, the regime expels Kurds and Turkmens from Kirkuk, Khaniqin, Makhmour, Sinjar, Tuz Khormatu and other districts. More than 800 persons are affected by these measures in the period between January and June, raising the number of persons expelled since 1991 to more than 94.000.

2001: Large numbers of persons are executed, among them officers, persons believed to be supporters of the opposition – particularly Shi’ites -, Muslim religious leaders, lawyers and teachers, but also family members of supposed opponents of the regime. There are reports about arbitrary arrests, non-public trials before special courts, systematic torture and mistreatment during imprisonment, and inhuman punishments executed in public. The expulsion policy against minorities continues.

2002: An amnesty called for all prisoners by Decree of October 20 was apparently not applied to political prisoners, according to statements of family members. The expulsion of Kurds, Turkmens and Assyro-Arameans continues. It concerns mainly families who either refused to sign the official form headed "Form concerning the correction of nationality” and thereby opposed the Arabisation programme, or who refused to join the Ba’ath party even after receiving a request to do so, or whose children did not join the dictator’s youth organizations (Saddams Ashbal).

Crimes under Saddam Hussein: Various execution and torture methods

Methods of killing and of execution:

• "Normal” executions (generally referred to, year after year, in the reports of human rights organizations in the following manner: " … in the year (under report hundreds of persons were executed”)

• Torturing to death

• Shooting without prior warning into groups of civilians

• Dispersing demonstrations by firing into the crowd

• Poisoning civil servants with thallium

• Attacking and bombing villages with subsequent massacres

• Disappearance of persons (several hundred thousand)

• Mass execution and their buriel in massgraves of abducted persons (e.g. of 8.000 men and youths of the Barzani tribe)

• Bombing villages and towns (Halabja) with poison gas

• Mass execution of survivors of the poison gas attacks

• The mass expulsions in 1975, 1987/88 and 1991, the destruction of 5.000 villages and the poisoning of wells led to living conditions that didn’t allow the survival of tens of thousands of old and sick persons, babies, small children, pregnant women, wounded and hungry persons

• Poisoning of wells

• Selective shooting of individuals on the street, in villages and cities, or when driving cars

• Attacks and attempts on the lives of exiled persons in all five continents carried out by members of the diplomatic service and secret agents of the regime

• Public decapitations with swords of women, of alleged prostitutes and of female members of the opposition

• Drowning of persons in the river Tigris by weighing them down with weights

• Hangings from transmission poles

• Throwing people out of upper floor windows (e.g. hospital windows)

Torture methods:

• Cutting out tongues

• Putting out eyes

• Electric shocks

• Causing burns with cigarettes

• Tearing out fingernails

• Rape

• Hanging from joints over long periods of time

• Beating with cables

• Beating of soles of feet

• Drilling through hands with electric drills

• Mock executions (in 1997 the death penalty was newly introduced for 18 criminal offences)

• Solitary confinement over many years

• Arresting of female family members of a prisoner and raping them in their presence

• Sending video tapes to members of the opposition who fled the country showing female members of their family being raped

• Amputation of both feet

• Handing over the bodies of persons who had been tortured to death to their family

• Setting bloodhounds on prisoners

• Cutting off both ears or right hand and left foot live on T.V.

• Branding marks onto the foreheads of deserters

• Breaking limbs

• Burning to death

• Withdrawal of water for long periods of time

The victims:

Kurds (Yezidi, Failis, Barzanis), Shi’ites, Ma´adan, Assyro-Aramean Christians (Nestorians, Chaldeans and others), Turkmens, Kuwaitis, other Arabs, other foreigners, Iranian prisoners, Iranian Arabs, supposed and actual opponents of the regime, supposed and actual criminals, so-called prostitutes, women and children of all nationalities, supposed and actual smugglers, doctors and hospital personnel who had treated injured and wounded Kurds or Shi’ites and refused to carry out amputations, members of the opposition (Communists, Socialists, Democrats, union members, former Maoists and Nasserists), members of the Ba’ath party, the regime, the Republican Guards, the army (officers and generals), and the secret services, politicians, members of Saddam Hussein’s family, including, among others, his two sons-in-law.

composed by Tilman Zuelch