Did Saddam's Army Test Poison Gas on Missing 5,000?
by Robert Fisk
Dissident Voice
December 16,
2002
Why didn't Tony
Blair and George Bush mention Saddam Hussein's most terrible war crime? Why, in
all their "dossiers", did they not refer to the 5,000 young men and
women who were held at detention centers when their families - of Iranian
origin - were hurled over the border to Iran just before President Saddam
invaded Iran in 1980?
Could it be because
these 5,000 young men and women were used for experiments in gas and biological
warfare agents whose ingredients were originally supplied by the United States?
Just months
before his September 1980 invasion of Iran - in which tens of thousands of Iranian
soldiers died an appalling death by gas burns and blisters - Saddam's Interior
Ministry issued directive No 2884, dated 10 April 1980, stating that "all
youths aged between 18 and 28 are exempt from deportation and must be held at
detention centers until further notice".
Most, though not
all, of the young men and women affected by this order were Kurds. None of
their families ever saw their loved ones again, but they have since been told
that the detainees were killed during experiments in gas and chemical warfare
centers in Iraq.
Among the most
terrible war crimes committed during the Second World War were the Japanese
experiments with chemicals and gas on prisoners at Harbin, in occupied China.
US officials ensured that the principal culprits got away in return for the
results of their experiments. The Nazis ran medical tests on Jews in
extermination camps in Europe, some of whose "doctors" also escaped
punishment.
As always in
Iraq - and elsewhere in the world - there is no proof. Kurdish families to whom
The Independent has spoken pleaded with us not to reveal their names, in the
pathetic hope that their sons and husbands and daughters might still be alive.
They include the father of a young man who was taken from his family home in
Baghdad, and the father of a man who was allegedly sent to the front line
during the Iran-Iraq war and who died as a "martyr" months after his
death during a medical experiment.
With the
encouragement of President Bush Sr, the US Department of Agriculture sent Iraq
samples of chemicals that could be used to protect crops and other agricultural
produce, with pesticides that were later developed for chemical warfare,
despite repeated warnings from American officials that the cultures could be of
use against human beings.
Just before the
September 1980 invasion of Iran, the detentions began. At least 5,000
"Kurdish youths", according to one Iraqi refugee interviewed by The
Independent, "vanished into thin air".
According to one
Iraqi dissident, whose refusal to ally himself to the Iraqi opposition is much
to his credit in the picture that is emerging, a large if unknown number of
young detainees may have perished as a result of being used as guinea pigs for
Saddam Hussein's research programs at various chemical, biological and nuclear
warfare laboratories. According to the same source, Iraqi scientists who have
since defected to the West have given hints of the biological warfare testing
program but have refused, for obvious reasons, to incriminate themselves.
Iraqi-Iranian Kurdish families who have received appalling information about
the fate of their relatives have refused to keep quiet. One father of five
missing boys gained an audience with an Iraqi vice-president who allegedly told
him that one of his sons had been imprisoned for opposing President Saddam but
had then had an "awakened conscience". The boy had decided to fight
in the war against Iran and had died in combat, his body being
"lost".
According to an
Iraqi Kurdish refugee in Lebanon who regards the official Washington- supported
Iraqi opposition as fifth columnists, Western intelligence has long known the
fate of the 5,000 or more "detainees". "It is now clear,"
he says, "that during the war with Iran many of the young detainees were
taken to secret laboratories in different locations in Iraq and were exposed to
intense doses of chemical and biological substances in a myriad of conditions
and situations. With every military setback at the front causing panic in
Baghdad, these experiments had to be speeded up - which meant more detainees
were needed to be sent to the laboratories, which had to test VX nerve gas,
mustard gas, sarin, tabun, aflatoxin, gas gangrene and anthrax." In the
early stages of the Iran-Iraq war, Iranian troops stormed across the Baghdad-Basra
highway and almost cut Iraq in half - to the great concern of Washington.
But not one of
the many accusations leveled against Saddam Hussein's regime by London and
Washington mentions the missing 5,000 young people "detained" by Iraq
just before the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war.
This could, of
course, reflect the West's embarrassment at its support for Iraq during that
war. Or it could be an attempt to avoid any inquiry into how President Saddam
obtained the means to wage chemical warfare against his opponents.
Robert Fisk is an award winning foreign correspondent for The
Independent (UK), where this article
first appeared. He is the author of Pity Thy Nation: The Abduction of
Lebanon (The Nation Books, 2002 edition)