Baghdad commemorates 40th anniversary of Anfal genocide

Shafaq News / Iraqi Prime Minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, along with members of the Council, commemorated the genocidal crimes committed against the Barzani people in Iraqi Kurdistan, known as the Anfal genocide, as the 40th anniversary of that heinous crime approaches.

In a statement, the Council expressed its profound appreciation and reverence for the sacrifices made by the innocent victims of that dreadful massacre, which inspired the Iraqi people to resist dictatorship and tyranny.

Furthermore, the government's spokesperson, Bassim Al-Awadi, stated that the Council also remembered the tragic ordeal that befell the noble Yazidi community in Iraq, who suffered at the hands of the vanquished terrorist organization, ISIS.

The Council conveyed heartfelt condolences and solidarity to the families of the martyrs whose sacrifices contributed to the stability, security, pluralism, and freedom of Iraq.

On July 31, 1983, Saddam Hussein's regime launched the Anfal campaign, which involved the arrest of 8,000 individuals from the Barzan region, transferring them to the deserts in southern Iraq, and subjecting them to mass killings and burial in mass graves.

On May 3, 2011, the Iraqi High Tribunal deemed the Anfal campaign as "a crime against humanity and genocide."

It is worth noting that in 1983, an uprising erupted in the Kurdistan region against Saddam's rule, leading to the Iraqi authorities launching the Anfal campaign.

Saddam entrusted the command of the campaign to the Northern Bureau Secretary of the "Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party," Lt. General Ali Hassan al-Majid al-Tikriti, who carried out an aerial and artillery bombardment with chemical bombs on Halabja and surrounding villages on March 16, 1988, in an attack classified as a genocide.

After 2003, key figures of the former regime were apprehended and convicted, including Saddam Hussein in the Anfal case, and some were sentenced to death, among them Ali Hassan al-Majid.