Iraqi Panel Files Case Against Hussein: Deposed Leader Accused In 1982 Shiite Massacre

By Andy Mosher, Washington Post, Monday, July 18, 2005; Page A01

BAGHDAD, July 17 -- The first criminal case has been filed against former president Saddam Hussein for his alleged role in a 1982 massacre of more than 150 people, and he may be tried as early as September, the chief investigative judge of Iraq's special tribunal announced Sunday.
Hussein, who was president of Iraq from 1979 until the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, has been in U.S. custody since he was captured in December of that year. The tribunal's investigators have sifted through evidence of his alleged involvement in about a dozen atrocities committed while he was in power.
The 1982 massacre in the Shiite Muslim village of Dujail was a relatively minor incident in Hussein's reign, compared with other massacres, such as a chemical weapons attack that killed an estimated 5,000 ethnic Kurds in the northern town of Halabja in 1988, and the brutal suppression of a revolt by Shiites after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.