Saddam lawyer says Iran responsible for 1988 gas attack on Kurds News
Saddam lawyer says Iran responsible for 1988 gas attack on Kurds

[JURIST] Issam Ghazzawi, a lawyer with Saddam Hussein's defense team, currently in some disarray after the resignation of its Jordanian leader [JURIST report] last week, said in an interview [transcript in German] in Tuesday's edition of the Vienna newspaper Die Presse that Iran, not Iraq, is responsible for the 1988 gas attack that killed thousands of Kurds. The gas attack is said to be a centerpiece of the crimes agianst humanity case against the former Iraqi president pending before the Iraqi Special Tribunal. Most US officials and international experts have blamed the attack on the Saddam regime, but in January 2003 Stephen Pelletiere, the CIA's senior political analyst for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, published an op-ed in the New York Times stating "We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds." AP has more [registration required].

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