Friday 13 December 2002

Did Saddam's army test poison gas on missing 5,000?

by Robert Fisk

click here to visit his website Why didn't Tony Blair and George Bush mention Saddam Hussein's most terrible war crime? Why, in all their "dossiers", did they not refer to the 5,000 young men and women who were held at detention centres when their families – of Iranian origin – were hurled over the border to Iran just before President Saddam invaded Iran in 1980?

Could it be because these 5,000 young men and women were used for experiments in gas and biological warfare agents whose ingredients were originally supplied by the United States?

Just months before his September 1980 invasion of Iran – in which tens of thousands of Iranian soldiers died an appalling death by gas burns and blisters – Saddam's Interior Ministry issued directive No 2884, dated 10 April 1980, stating that "all youths aged between 18 and 28 are exempt from deportation and must be held at detention centres until further notice".

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