Friday, Jul 22, 2005

Al-Dujayl's gunmen had chosen the stretch of highway by the Ibrahimiya School for Boys as the site for their ambush of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's then president. The mainly Shia town, 50km north of Baghdad, had been restive for months, with Iranian-backed preachers calling for a home-made Islamic revolution in the face of rising government anxieties.

By July 1982, tensions with the secular Ba'athist regime, heightened by war with neighbouring Iran, had come to a head and the 19 gunmen opened fire on Mr Hussein's motorcade.

The regime's merciless reprisals against al-Dujayl in the years that followed are now at the centre of a long-awaited justice process for Mr Hussein's former subjects.

Last Sunday, the Iraqi Special Tribunal, the national court set up to try ex-regime officials following the US-led invasion in 2003, said it was laying formal charges against Mr Hussein. Ra'id Juhi, the tribunal's chief prosecutor, promised a trial date "within days" for the ousted president and three other high-ranking Ba'athist officials.

Tribunal officials say the case, though relatively minor, will be simpler to prosecute than the charges of mass murder, and even genocide, that may also be levelled at Mr Hussein and others. For many Iraqi Shia, al-Dujayl can serve as a proxy for decades of nationwide suffering.

But to dispatch Mr Hussein with due process, prosecutors will have to revisit the failed Ibrahimiya school ambush, which happened 23 years ago this month.

"Religion ruled this town in those days," recalls a Shia camera shop owner when asked about al-Dujayl's clash with the secular strongman.

Two years before the ambush, Mr Hussein's regime had executed Mohamed Baqr al-Sadr, the celebrated Shia cleric, and "disappeared" some 30 men from al-Dujayl known activists from the Sadr-inspired Dawa, or "Call" movement, town residents say.

Sheikh Ibrahim Jassim al-Khafaji, now 48, says he lost three of his brothers in those disappearances.

When the gunmen, seeking revenge, failed, Mr Hussein deemed al-Dujayl's townsfolk collectively guilty, Mr Khafaji recalls. He wants Mr Hussein sent to the gallows without delay. "We demand justice for this criminal and his infidel Ba'athist henchmen. I want to execute him now," the sheikh says. Mr Juhi, the chief prosecutor, referred vaguely to the regime's "massacre" of about 150 Shia men from al-Dujayl.

But the real events in the case were more complex, Shia survivors say.

At the time, just 100km to the east, Iraq's audacious September 1980 invasion of Iran had bogged down into a seemingly unwinnable war of attrition.

Within half an hour of the ambush, military helicopters zoomed over al-Dujayl, followed by ground assault units from Mr Hussein's fiercely loyal Republican Guard. According to Mr Khafaji, the ensuing hunt went on for more than two days, by which time eight of the would-be assassins were dead, including their three ringleaders.

The al-Dujayl gunmen killed about 60 of the regime's troops, he says. Eleven of the conspirators escaped, most to Iran.

However, the regime razed al-Dujayl's date groves and sent about 900 Shia residents, including women and children, to desert prisons. Ba'athist documents record that at least 143 men from the town were tried before a state security panel and executed in 1985. Survivors say at least 200 others are also presumed dead.

One survivor, Abdel Zaher Abed, 63, shows heavy scars on his back, which he says are from floggings with plastic hoses. He looks forward to seeing Mr Hussein in court. "Thank God there will be a trial now, and the case will be settled justly," he says.

Some of the escaped gunmen returned home after the regime fell. One, who asked not to be named, seems less concerned about Mr Hussein's fate. "I don't really care what happens to Saddam now," he says. "Iraq's situation today is so much worse."

Mr Khafaji, for his part, says punishing top ex-regime leaders is not enough. Two local Ba'athist organisers Abdullah Ruwayd al-Musheikhi and his son Mizher Ruwayd al-Musheikhi have also been charged, apparently for pointing out Dawa conspirators and their families to the authorities.

According to Mr Khafaji, "about 100 other guilty people, including some Shia" are still at large.

Neil MacDonald and Awadh al-Taee

Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2005. Privacy policy.