The Dujail massacre was a mass killing of Shia rebels by the Ba'athist Iraqi government on 8 July 1982 in Dujail, Iraq. The massacre was committed in retaliation to an earlier assassination attempt by the Shia Iranian supported Islamic Dawa Party against the then President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. The town of Dujail had a large Shia population, with 75,000 residents at the time of the incident, and was a well-known stronghold of the Dawa Party. It is located approximately from the capital of Baghdad, in the Sunni-majority Saladin Governorate of Iraq.
Hundreds of men, women and children were detained after the failed assassination attempt; more than 140 people were sentenced and executed for their alleged involvement in the plot, including four people who were mistakenly killed during the mass executions. Hundreds more were sent into exile and their houses, farms and properties were demolished.
Following his capture and subsequent trial during the Iraq War, Saddam Hussein was hanged on 30 December 2006 for crimes against humanity in connection with his involvement in the Dujail massacre. Many others, including Hussein's brother, were also sentenced and executed for crimes against humanity.
Background
The Shia-dominated town of Dujail was a stronghold of the Islamic Dawa Party, an Islamist organization involved in the Iranian-backed insurgency against Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime in Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War. Widely viewed in the West as a terrorist organization at the time, the Dawa Party was banned by the Iraqi regime in 1980 and its members sentenced to death in absentia by the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council.
Events
On 8 July 1982, Saddam Hussein visited Dujail to make a speech praising local conscripts who had served Iraq in the ongoing war against neighbouring Iran. Hussein visited several households, and after finishing his speech, he prepared for his return to the capital city of Baghdad. As his motorcade proceeded down the main road, up to a dozen gunmen used the cover of the date palm orchards that lined both sides of the road to open fire, killing two of his bodyguards before fleeing on foot. In the ensuing four-hour-long firefight, most of the attackers were killed and several were captured.
Reprisals
Saddam Hussein personally interviewed two of the captured attackers before he ordered his special security and military forces to round up all suspected members of the Islamic Dawa Party who lived in Dujail, along with their families. He later ordered the razing of orchards on both sides of the road from Balad to Dujail to prevent a repeat of the ambush.
On 14 October 1982, the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council ordered the retitling of the roadside farmland to the Ministry of Agriculture and the compensation of the owners for their loss.
By late December 1982, 393 men over the age of 19 as well as 394 women and children from Dujail and the nearby town of Balad had been arrested. Held in detention at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, 138 male adult detainees and ten juveniles were tried before the Revolutionary Court after they confessed to having taken part in the assassination attempt.
Over several months, the remaining prisoners were transferred to detention centers in the desert to the west. One of the prisons was Nugra Salman. More than 40 of those detained died during interrogation or in detention. A resident of Dujail later testified at Saddam's 2005 trial that he had witnessed torture and murders during the reprisal, including the murders of seven of his ten brothers.
After nearly two years in detention, around 400 detainees, primarily family members of the 148 who had confessed to involvement, were sent into internal exile in a remote part of southern Iraq. The remaining detainees were released and sent back to Dujail.
Trial and execution of suspects
Following the 1982 confessions of 148 of the accused, the judiciary investigated the evidence in support and in late May 1984, it accepted their pleas of guilty to treason for providing armed support for Iran during the war, allowing the Revolutionary Court to review the investigation records and confessions before it sentenced the suspects. On 14 June 1984, the court handed down the mandatory death sentence. On 23 July 1984, Saddam signed the court documents authorising the executions and ordered the razing of the homes, buildings, date palms and fruit orchards of the convicted.
