US must also be tried for Saddam’s crimes
Dec 21, 2003
TEHRAN – The United States should be tried for crimes committed by
Saddam Hussein because it supported the ousted Iraqi dictator’s regime
in the past, former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said
Friday. “We would not want Saddam Hussein to be punished by the
Americans because the United States should itself be tried for
Saddam’s crimes,” Rafsanjani said during Friday prayers broadcast on
Iranian national radio. “From the day the Baathist regime began its
fight against the Muslims and the Shiites, the United States, Britain
and other oppressor powers rallied around Saddam Hussein,” he said.
“They were accomplices in all the crimes committed by Saddam,”
Rafsanjani charged, referring in particular to the bloody 1980-88 war
on Iran. “The war against Iran was launched with their support and
when they saw that Saddam Hussein couldn’t hold out any longer
(against the Iranian army), they entered the war themselves, attacking
our oil platforms, our ships and our planes.” Rafsanjani, who heads
the Expediency Council, the Islamic republic’s top arbitration body,
said Saddam was being branded a war criminal for chemical attacks on
the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988, in which some 5,000 people died.
– AFP
.
|
