ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Nugra Salman, the notorious prison in southern Iraqi deserts, has left an unhealed wound on the survivors of thousands of Kurds who were transferred there in late 1980s.
But with handing down the death sentence to the Ba’ath-era prison warden of Nugra Salman, Ajaj Ahmed Hardan, this time their agony is accompanied by a mild relief and redress when they visited the site in which their families were massacred on Saturday.
The ruling against Ajaj stemmed from charges of genocides and crimes of humanity committed against the Kurds during the Anfal campaign, Iraqi state media said on May 14, when the infamous former Ba’athi official received the verdict in the Rasafa Appeal Court in Baghdad.
The Nugra Salman execution confessed several heinous crimes, including subjecting Kurdish detainees to starvation, torture, rape, and mass-killings.
He was arrested in summer 2025 after decades of hiding under false identities.
Survivors and relatives of victims have filed more than 300 complaints against the former prison chief, while 221 invitations were issued to victims’ families from the Kurdistan Region and Iraq’s eastern Diyala province - home to a significant Kurdish population - to attend the proceedings.
Carried out between February and September 1988 under the regime of toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the Anfal campaign against the Kurds involved chemical attacks, mass executions, and the destruction of more than 4,000 villages. Estimates suggest between 50,000 and 182,000 Kurds were killed, with many buried in unmarked mass graves across Iraq’s southern deserts.