Anfal Judges to Speak at Case Western on January 29, 2008
On June 24, 2007, the Iraqi High Tribunal convicted “Chemical Ali” (Ali Hassan al-Majid) and five other military leaders of Saddam Hussein’s regime of international crimes related to their roles in a three-year crackdown of northern Iraqi Kurds known as the Anfal campaign. The Tribunal’s judgment marks one of the only times in history individuals have been convicted of genocide - the worst crime known to humankind.
The Iraqi High Tribunal and the US Regime Crimes Liaison Office (RCLO) have provided Case Western Reserve University the just-completed English translation of the Anfal Trial Judgment for us to post on our award-winning Grotian Moment Website: <http://law.case.edu/grotian-moment-blog/ . This is the only place in the world where researchers can read the English translation of the historic opinion, whose 900 pages detail the legal and factual conclusions of the Tribunal. Note, at the request of RCLO all witness/victim/family names have been redacted for their safety.
The judges who presided over the Anfal trial will be making a live presentation at Case Western Reserve University School of Law at 4:00 pm on January 29, 2008. Through translators, the judges and other officers of the Iraqi High Tribunal will discuss the challenges faced, the precedent that their historic judgment set and the question of fairness in the proceedings.
This trip, which also includes stops at American University and Vanderbilt, will mark the judges’ first public appearance outside of Iraq. A transcript of the January 29 session will be posted on the “Grotian Moment” website after the event.
This program is part of the law school’s year-long series to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Genocide Convention, which has included a day-long symposium on September 28 that featured Robert Petit, Chief Prosecutor of the Cambodian Genocide Tribunal; the October 16 Cox Center Humanitarian Award Lecture by Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and the January 15 Klatsky Human Rights Lecture by Yale Law Professor W. Michael Reisman. The webcasts of those events are available for viewing on demand at: http://law.case.edu/lectures.
The law school provides research assistance to five war crimes tribunals, including the Iraqi High Tribunal, and has a special program in which students spend a semester interning at the international tribunals. Currently, third-year law student Brianne Draffin (Editor in Chief of War Crimes Prosecution Watch) is serving as a judicial clerk/intern to the judges of the Sierra Leone Tribunal who are presiding over the trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor.
