Iraq a case of genocide accused
Government documents captured by rebels outline
Saddam Hussein's murderous campaign against his own country’s four million Kurds.
In an underground facility, somewhere in the United States, researchers are going through a mountain of Iraqi files that could provide the legal basis for the first case of genocide ever to be brought before the World Court.
The materials, captured by Kurdish rebels in the uprising against Saddam Hussein immediately following the Persian Gulf war, provide the first written documentation of a campaign of terror waged for a decade against the four million Kurds in Iraq, a campaign that reached its zenith between March and August of 1988.
Like Gestapo files and those of the Stasi, the East German intelligence agency that trained Iraq's security police, the Iraqi documents set forth in chillingly bureaucratic language the "liquidations," "expulsions" and "transfers" of Kurdish victims, who …
Judith Miller is the staff writer at The New York Times Magazine.
Photographs by Susan Meiselas / Magnum
Iraq a case of genocide accused
The New York Times
The New York Times Magazine
January 3, 1993 / section 6
Iraq a case of genocide accused
By Judith Miller
Iraq a case of genocide accused
