Text 24865, 69 rader
Skriven 2008-12-10 12:58:05 av Roy Witt (1:397/22)
  Kommentar till text 24816 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
Ärende: Proof is evident                    (was) Loyalties
===========================================================
10 Dec 08 10:48, Michiel van der Vlist wrote to Robert Bashe:

 RW>>>> That Saddam gassed the Kurds is not in question. He most
 RW>>>> definately did.
 MV>>> It is not proven.
 RB>> No pictures of him personally mixing the ingredients, eh?
 MvdV> As I wrote: no proof.

From Ward's favorite news source, MSNBC:

"Ali Hassan al-Majid already faces death by hanging after being convicted
last year for his role in the killing of tens of thousands of Kurds in a
crackdown in the late 1980s. But that execution has been delayed by legal
wrangling."

Update:

"Ali Hassan al-Majid was sentenced to death Tuesday in connection with a
1991 crackdown on Iraq's Shiite population which killed tens of thousands
of people."

Certainly they cannot convict someone without proof!

And as Ward indicated, legal wrangling such as an appeal must be in the
works, as his sentence was to be carried out within 30 days of his
conviction.

 MV>>> I do not care what you think. I care about verifiable proof and
 MV>>> there is none.

 RB>> A little naive, don't you think?

 MvdV> Not at all. I am just stating the facts as I know them. There is no
 MvdV> proof.

"During the late stages of the Iran-Iraq War Ali Hassan was given the post
of Secretary General of the Northern Bureau of the Ba'ath Party, in which
capacity he served from March 1987 to April 1989. This effectively made
him Saddam's proconsul in the north of the country, commanding all state
agencies in the rebellious Kurdish-populated region of the country. He
soon displayed his characteristic ruthlessness, ordering the
indiscriminate use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas, sarin, tabun
and VX against Kurdish targets. The first such attacks occurred as early
as April 1987 and continued into 1988, culminating in the notorious attack
on Halabja in which over 5,000 people were killed."

"With Kurdish resistance continuing, Ali Hassan decided to break the back
of the rebellion by eradicating the civilian population of the Kurdish
regions. His forces embarked on a systematic campaign of mass killings,
property destruction and forced population transfer (called "Arabization")
in which thousands of Kurdish villages were razed and their inhabitants
either killed or deported to the south of Iraq. A decree signed by him
(that's called written proof) in June 1987 stated that "Within their
jurisdiction, the armed forces must kill any human being or animal present
in these areas." By 1988, some 4,000 villages had been destroyed, an
estimated 180,000 Kurds had been killed and some 1.5 million had been
deported. He was nicknamed Chemical Ali ("Ali Kimyawi") by the Kurds for
his role in the campaign; according to Iraqi Kurdish sources, Ali Hassan
openly boasted of this nickname. Others dubbed him the "Butcher of
Kurdistan".

So much for 'no proof'...

                R\%/itt



--- Twit(t) Filter v2.1 (C) 2000
 * Origin: SATX Alamo Area Net * South * Texas, USA * (1:397/22)