ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq's federal appellate court has upheld the death sentence against Ajaj Ahmed Hardan, a notorious Ba'ath-era prison warden, the plaintiffs' lawyer announced Thursday. Hardan is accused of torturing and killing hundreds of Kurds during one of the Anfal campaigns.
"The Ministry of Justice will determine the time for executing the sentence, which must not exceed 30 days,” Ayad Kakayi told Rudaw.
He also noted that “starvation, thirst, and torture to death” as well as enforced disappearance and raping detainees were among the charges irreversibly upheld against Ajaj.
Meanwhile, based on a court document, a copy of which was obtained by Rudaw, Ajaj was convicted of killing 1,068 detainees in Nuqra Salman, an infamous prison located in Iraq’s southern deserts that was utilized to detain thousands of Kurdish civilians in late 1980s.
Ajaj confessed to the heinous crimes he and the other Ba’athist security officials committed against the prisoners.
"We used starvation as a weapon of war, no less deadly than military bombardment... Two-thirds of the detainees died in just ten months," he said in an interview with Iraqi state media in late May, speaking from jail.
His remarks came about a week before he was sentenced to death for genocide and crimes against humanity under Articles 11 and 12 of the Iraqi Supreme Criminal Tribunal Law, respectively, among other crimes.
Recounting her experience in the prisons, Nishtiman Ali Khurshid said during one of the trial sessions of Ajaj that, “My mother was breastfeeding my younger brother when Ajaj came.”
“He pushed a cable into the baby’s mouth, tearing him apart. Then he struck my mother’s chest with the same cable,” she added.
She said that over the years, her mother's breast pain developed into cancer, and she is now undergoing cancer treatment.
Ajaj faked his own death after the ouster of the Ba’athist regime by the US in 2003, fleeing to Syria before later living under a false identity in Iraq’s central Salahaddin province.
He was captured in August 2025 following a six-month intelligence operation launched after testimony from Anfal survivor Fazila Hama-Khula, who was detained at Nugra Salman as a child in 1988 and witnessed crimes attributed to Ajaj, including the death of her six-year-old brother from starvation and the killing of her infant sister.
Ajaj’s story is part of a significantly larger narrative about the Anfal campaigns that resulted in the genocide of more than 182,000 Kurds and the destruction of at least 4,500 villages.
