Iran wants Saddam tried for use of chemical weapons against Iranians

Iran asked the court trying &to=http://english.pravda.ru/diplomatic/2001/12/18/23839.html' target=_blank>Saddam Hussein to charge the former Iraqi leader with crimes from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, such as his use of chemical weapons, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Wednesday.

Mottaki also blamed Western companies that supplied Iraq under Saddam with chemical weapons, saying they should compensate for denying Iranian and Iraqi people of their lives.

He made the comments after visiting victims of Saddam's chemical weapons at Sassan Hospital in Tehran on Wednesday.

Saddam is on trial in Baghdad for the deaths of more than 140 Shiites following a 1982 assassination attempt against him in the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad.

"Victims of chemical weapons are the live evidence of the anti-human crimes committed by Saddam's regime in open violation of all international regulations and before the indifferent eyes of the civilized world," Mottaki told a press conference.

He said Saddam's forces launched 200 attacks using chemical weapons against Iranian forces and civilians in the 1980-88 war.

"It's an unprecedented crime in history," he said.

In the special ward at Sassan Hospital in central Tehran, chemical weapons victim Kavous Asemani said he remembered every moment of the attack that injured him in 1983 in the northern Persian Gulf.

"I was aboard a ship carrying weapons for soldiers when we were attacked. At first, it smelled as if it was a perfume. Soon, we started to wheeze and gasp. We were blinded by uncontrollable tears. I began to vomit blood," he told Mottaki.