Baghdad, Iraq – Iraq’s president said Tuesday that Saddam Hussein had confessed to killings and other crimes committed during his regime, including the massacre of thousands of Kurds in the late 1980s.
President Jalal Talabani told Iraqi television he had been informed by an investigating judge that “he was able to extract confessions from Saddam’s mouth” about crimes “such as executions” that the ousted leader had personally ordered.
Asked about specific examples, Talabani, a Kurd, replied “Anfal,” the code name for the 1987-88 campaign that his Patriotic Union of Kurdistan maintains led to the deaths of about 182,000 Kurds and the destruction of “dozens of Kurdish villages.” Those villages included Halabjah, where thousands of Kurdish villagers were gassed in 1988.
Hussein faces his first trial Oct. 19 for his alleged role in another atrocity – the 1982 massacre of Shiites in Dujail, a town north of Baghdad, following an assassination attempt there against him.
The Iraqi Special Tribunal has decided to conduct trials on separate alleged offenses rather than lump them all together in a single proceeding.
Hussein could face the death penalty if convicted in the Dujail case, the only one referred to trial so far.
Iraqi television aired the interview so late that it was impossible to reach Hussein’s lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, or officials of the special tribunal.
However, Abdel Haq Alani, a legal consultant to Hussein’s family, condemned Talabani’s remarks and said the alleged confession “comes to me as a surprise, a big surprise.”
“I have heard nothing whatsoever about this alleged media speculation,” Alani said in Amman, Jordan. “This is a matter for the judiciary to decide on, not for politicians, and Jalal should know better than that. Why should he make a statement on the accused to the public? The court, the judge need to decide on this.”
He said Hussein did not mention any confession when he met Monday with his Iraqi lawyer.
“Is this the fabrication of Talabani or what? Let’s not have a trial on TV. Let the court of law, not the media, make its ruling on this,” Alani said.
Hussein’s former chief lawyer, Ziad Khasawneh of Jordan, said the Iraqi president still could face the death penalty if he confessed, but a full trial would not be necessary if he admitted to the charge.
However, details of the purported confessions were unclear.
