By Cam McGrath
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, Mar 3 2003 (IPS)

A demand by human rights campaigners to arrest Iraqi delegates at the Arab League summit over the weekend was inevitably rejected, but it has focused some attention on violations by Iraqi leaders.

The campaign led by Human Rights Watch with the support of Egyptian and other groups underlines the complaints that Saddam Hussein is not the only leader in Iraq abusing the rights of his people.

Several groups have come together to accuse Saddam Hussein and his senior officials of crimes against humanity. The charges include genocide, ordering troops to kill civilians, massive looting during the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and routine execution of political opponents.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on Egyptian authorities to arrest Izzat Ibrahim El-Douri, vice-chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council at the Arab League meeting for his reported involvement in the "genocidal" 1988 drive against the Kurdish minority. The Revolutionary Command Council launched eight military offensives against the Kurdish population in northern Iraq in which an estimated 100,000 Kurds were killed.

HRW also demanded arrest of Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan for his alleged role in the brutal suppression of a popular uprising in southern Iraq in 1991.

"Egypt has a clear legal obligation to bring them to justice, and the international community should back their prosecution," said HRW executive director Kenneth Roth. "Egypt is obliged under international law to prosecute anyone on its soil responsible for genocide, torture, and serious violations of the laws of war."

Egypt is signatory to the 1949 Geneva Convention, the UN Convention against Torture and the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The international treaties provide for trial or extradition of persons accused of crimes against humanity.

A rights groups in Egypt backed the HRW demand. "In principle, all perpetrators of crimes against humanity must be brought to justice," Hafez Abu Sa’ada, secretary-general of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) told IPS. "But we do not yet have the legal basis to allow for Egyptian authorities to arrest perpetrators."

The Egyptian constitution does not provide for prosecution or extradition of war criminals, Sa’ada says. "We must amend our laws," he says.

The London-based group INDICT has compiled a list of crimes against humanity committed by 12 senior Iraqi officials, the so-called "Dirty Dozen" which includes Saddam Hussein. It has demanded arrest or extradition of these leaders if they visit another country.

The group asked Egyptian authorities to arrest Ali Hassan Al-Majid, a cousin of Saddam Hussein who was senior commander during the 1988 campaign against Kurds, following reports that he planned to travel to Cairo earlier. Al-Majid, also known as "Chemical Ali" was the reported mastermind of the poison gas attack on the Kurdish town Halabja in 1988. An estimated 5,000 civilians died in the assault.

"Any Egyptian who shakes hands with Ali Hassan Al-Majid will have blood on his own hands," the group’s head Charles Forrest said.

Al-Majid did visit Cairo, but INDICT claims it successfully thwarted Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz’s European travel plans in 2001, and pressured Switzerland into expelling former head of Iraqi Foreign Intelligence Barzan Al-Tikriti in 2002. Both these names appear on the Dirty Dozen list.

The U.S. government is also building its case against Saddam Hussein and his top aides. A White House spokesman has said that the U.S. would like to establish an international tribunal to try the Iraqi leadership like the one set up in The Hague to prosecute former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.

The Paris-based International Alliance for Justice (IAJ) has also demanded establishment of an international tribunal. "It is an insult to humanity that Saddam Hussein and his regime are still immune from accountability and are still killing the Iraqi people and threatening neighbouring countries, and are still holding in balance the fate of almost 200,000 Iraqis and Kuwaiti citizens who disappeared in various campaigns," the group said in a statement.

"The fact that time has passed since some of those atrocities were committed should by no means constitute a valid excuse for inaction today," IAJ says.

International appeals for war tribunals would be on Saddam Hussein’s mind, says Egyptian political analyst Sherif El-Musa. "Saddam is not likely to accept any offer of exile," he says. "He has said he would rather die than relinquish power. He probably knows that if he leaves his country he will not be left alone."

Excerpt: