Former Iraq deputy PM denies genocide against Kurds in Anfal campaign News
Former Iraq deputy PM denies genocide against Kurds in Anfal campaign

[JURIST] Former Saddam-era deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz [BBC profile; JURIST news archive], brought before the Iraqi High Tribunal [official website] Monday to testify against six defendants accused of genocide in the Anfal trial [JURIST news archive; BBC trial timeline], instead denied that Hussein's government had ever carried out any such attacks. Aziz insisted that Iraq did not have the chemical weapons necessary for the alleged poison gas attacks that killed 5600 Kurds in northern Iraq, instead fingering Iran as the culprit. Aziz went on to praise Hussein [AFP report], continuing even after he was ordered to be be silent by the chief judge. AP has more.

The six defendants are all former Hussein regime officials charged in connection with the deaths of some 180,000 Kurds during the so-called "Anfal" campaigns [HRW backgrounder] of the 1980s. One of the six, Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid [BBC profile; JURIST news archive], also known as "Chemical Ali," allegedly ordered the gas attacks. If convicted, the defendants could be sentenced to death by hanging. In December 2006, prosecutors presented video evidence of the gas attacks, but later that month two co-defendants said Hussein's regime had only used conventional weapons [JURIST reports] against the Kurds. Aziz is suspected of involvement in the deaths of Kurds and Shiites in 1991, but his lawyers say that he has not yet been charged.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.