Saddam genocide trial set for Aug 21

"After the transfer of the investigation results of the Al-Anfal crimes to the criminal court... the tribunal decided on Monday August 21, 2006 as a trial date," the Iraqi High Tribunal said in a statement.

The court had announced in April that Saddam and six co-defendants including Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, would face genocide charges over the Anfal campaign against Iraq's Kurds.

Saddam and seven co-defendants are currently on trial for allegedly executing 148 inhabitants of the Shiite village of Dujail following an assassination attempt there against Sadddam in 1982.

They face execution by hanging if convicted in the Dujail case, which is set to resume on July 10. A US official has said a verdict could be issued by mid-September.

But Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, has said that Saddam would be tried for all his crimes before any of the verdicts are implemented.

Aside from Saddam, other defendants in the August trial include the so-called Chemical Ali, notorious for ordering the gassing of Halabja in 1988 which killed 5,000 people.

However the Halabja case will not be included in the trial.

Others set to be in the dock include former minister of defense Sultan Hashem Ahmed and high ranking Baathists Saber Abdel Aziz, Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, Taher Mohammed al-Ani and Farhan al-Juburi.

A US official close to the court said in April that "the evidence that the court is going to look at involves voluminous amounts of documents, testimonies from a large number of victims and eyewitnesses and forensic evidence from mass graves that have been excavated."

Prosecutors have described the Anfal campaign as an act of genocide against the Kurdish people, while the former Iraqi regime defended its actions as no more than a necessary counter-insurgency operation during wartime.

Though estimates vary, it is believed at least 100,000 Kurds died during this period with over 3,000 villages destroyed.