‘Chemical Ali’ defends taped promises to wipe out Kurds as genocide trial continues News
‘Chemical Ali’ defends taped promises to wipe out Kurds as genocide trial continues

[JURIST] The Iraqi High Tribunal [official website] heard more tapes on Tuesday in which the voice of defendant Ali Hassan al-Majid [JURIST news archive; BBC profile] vowed to "leave no Kurd [alive] who speaks the Kurd language" and to "wipe them out." The genocide trial [JURIST news archive; BBC trial timeline] of al-Majid, a cousin of Saddam Hussein [JURIST news archive] known to the Western media as "Chemical Ali," resumed last week. Following the December 30 execution of Hussein [JURIST report], the trial has focused on al-Majid and five other former Hussein regime officials alleged to be instrumental in the deaths of some 180,000 Kurds during the so-called "Anfal" campaigns [HRW backgrounder] of the 1980s.

Al-Majid told the court that his anti-Kurdish statements were used as a battle tactic to intimidate the "anti-government forces" against which he fought. In other portions of the tapes, al-Majid was heard referring to current Iraqi President Jalal Talabani [official website, in Arabic; BBC profile] as a "wicked and a pimp" for attempting to reach a truce. After refusing to make an opening statement in the absence of his lawyer, Al-Majid told the court he would face death "with open arms." AFP has more. AP has additional coverage.

THIS DAY @ LAW

White supremacists overthrow government in Wilmington, North Carolina

A group of white supremacists overthrew the government of Wilmington, North Carolina on November 10, 1898, killing at least dozens of Black people in the process. The city's Republican government resigned after the 500-2,000 strong white mob burned the offices of a Black-owned newspaper and terrorized black neighborhoods. The new state Democratic government passed laws in 1899 disenfranchising Black voters across North Carolina. Learn more about the 1898 Wilmington Coup.

Supreme Court limited free speech in wartime

On November 10, 1919, the US Supreme Court ruled in Abrams v. United States that the federal government could criminalize speech if it was of a type tending to bring about harmful results, in this case, resistance to the United States war effort. In a powerful dissenting opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes countered that even during wartime, free speech could only be curtailed when there was clear and "present danger of immediate evil or an intent to bring it about."

Leonid Brezhnev dies

On November 10, 1982, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev died of a heart attack. He had served as leader of the USSR from October 1964 until his death. Following his death, the Soviet Union cycled through three more leaders during the 1980s until Mikhail Gorbachev allowed the country to dissolve in 1991. Read an obituary of Leonid Brezhnev from the New York Times.