The court will seek justice against Saddam and his six co-defendants for the country’s 1988 Anfal offensive in which its security services killed between 50,000 and 100,000 Kurds and destroyed more than 2,000 Kurdish villages.

By size alone, Anfal, which means “the spoils” in Arabic, is viewed as more important than the tribunal’s recently concluded case against Saddam over the execution of 148 Shia villagers from Dujail, north of Baghdad, after a failed assassination attempt against him in 1982.

A verdict in that trial, which ended last month, is expected in October. Saddam faces a possible death sentence and could be executed after appeal, even before the Anfal trial finishes, probably in December.

During the eight-stage military campaign, from February to August in 1988, civilians were gassed and there were mass arrests. The offensive is seen as the pinnacle of Saddam’s cruelty against the Kurds, but does not include the gassing of 5,000 in the city of Halabja in March 1988 — expected to be the subject of another trial.

The campaign began after Kurdish rebel factions, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, cast off Saddam’s control of their region during the 1980-1988 Iraqi war with Iran.

In March 1987 Saddam appointed his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, as head of the Northern Bureau Command, giving him emergency powers to crush the Kurds. Al-Majid earned the nickname Chemical Ali for his use of mustard and nerve gas during Anfal.

The Iraqi High Tribunal has charged Saddam and al-Majid with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Five co-defendants have been indicted on the last two charges.

Human Rights Watch said that the Dujail trial was marred by perceived political pressure that culminated in the resignation in January of the first judge. The watchdog also criticised a decision not to rule on defence motions during the trial and the failure to provide adequate security. Three defence lawyers were killed.

Nehal Buhta, a fellow with the international justice programme at Human Rights Watch, told The Times that Anfal was “the first genocide trial concerning events in the Middle East. It may rank with the Eichmann trial and the Nuremberg trial in terms of its historical importance . . . the indications are that the Iraqi High Tribunal will struggle to conduct the trial in a way that will stand the test of time as Nuremberg and Eichmann have.”

• Snipers killed at least 17 people and injured dozens more yesterday in attacks on a Shia religious procession that drew hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Baghdad. (AP)

  THE TRIAL

• The chief trial judge will be a Shia Arab named Abdallah al-Ameri

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