Kuwait lists charges against Saddam
Kuwaiti prosecutors have drawn up a list of charges against ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and hundreds of his officials for alleged war crimes committed during Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait.
The charges will be delivered to the Iraqi court that is set to try Saddam and his men and will be added to the list of Iraqi charges against them, prosecutor general Hamed al-Othman said on Wednesday.
Among the charges are that Saddam’s men kidnapped 605 Kuwaitis and nationals of other countries who lived in the oil-rich state at the time of the 1990-91 occupation, al-Othman said. The remains of 147 of them were found in mass graves in Iraq after Saddam was toppled in April 2003.
Another 5733 were tortured by electric shock, beaten, starved and sexually abused, and 139 were seriously injured by shooting or by land mines planted by Iraqis, he alleged.
Saddam trial
No date for Saddam’s trial has been set. The ousted leader, who was captured in December 2003, is facing charges in Iraq that include killing rival politicians during his 30-year rule, gassing Kurds, invading Kuwait and suppressing Kurdish and Shia uprisings in 1991 after the US-led Gulf War that liberated Kuwait.
Kuwait was sending to the Iraqi court charges against Saddam and nine other senior regime figures – including Ali Hassan al-Majid, who ruled Kuwait during the seven-month occupation, Tarek Aziz, Saddam’s foreign minister, and Taha Yassin Ramadan, who served as vice president. The three men are also in custody awaiting trial.
The names of 293 other lower officials and their crimes were also included, according to the prosecutor general. It was not clear how many of these officials are in custody in Iraq.
Among the charges are kidnapping, murder, torture, theft and damaging the environment, he said.
Senior Iraqi officials ordered in writing the theft and destruction of the country’s archives, and the Iraqis sabotaged some 700 oil wells before their troops withdrew from the country, the prosecutor general said.