The nightmare of Ajaj: The Baath regime’s infamous executioner

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Inside the Rusafa Court of Appeals in Baghdad on Thursday, I saw a man who no longer resembled the intimidating individual he once was - no longer the strong, broad-shouldered, feared man remembered by the survivors. He shuffled through the narrow courtroom corridor toward the waiting chamber where the trial would begin.

That day marked a historic confrontation at the Rusafa Court of Appeal: survivors of the Anfal campaign finally facing one of their executioners, Ajaj Ahmad Hardan al-Tikriti. The courtroom carried the weight of wounds that had never healed.

“I wish the judge had allowed me to reenact what Ajaj did inside the courtroom,” Shamzin Ali told me. “I wanted to place my knees on his shoulders and ask him: Why did you take those girls to your room and rape them?”

The mere sight of Ajaj reopened old scars. Survivors and witnesses erupted in anger and grief as Kurdish lawyers struggled to calm the crowded courtroom before proceedings began at 10 a.m.

“He has gone mad,” Soran Abdullah whispered to me. “Soon he will taste the bitterness of his crimes.”

Ajaj’s brief appearance stirred the room into chaos. Every witness carried a story waiting to be told.

“The game has reversed,” Rizgar Shamzin said. “For eight months I hid from Ajaj in Nugra Salman prison. Today he hides from us.”

The courtroom itself was small. A judge sat at the front beside investigating judges, three Kurdish lawyers, and a female defense attorney standing firmly beside Ajaj. In the center stood the defendant’s cage, where Ajaj appeared in yellow jumpsuits.

The survivors had come from Khurmatu - a predominantly Kurdish town in Salahaddin province, Chamchamal and Qaradagh - two towns in Sulaimani province, Koya and Balisan - and city and area in Erbil province, and Halabja province. Each arrived carrying memories of torture, death, and disappearance. The man standing in the cage was burdened not only by their testimonies, but also by thousands of untold stories that never reached Baghdad.

The hearing opened with the testimony of Fazila Mohammed Mahmood. But after swearing before the judge, she fell silent

“Your Honor,” she said softly, refusing to continue, saying: "Mr. Judge, I want to speak to the accused in complete confidentiality because I want the names in my narrative to be protected."

The judge then summoned Rizgar Shamzin Ali.

“We suffered greatly at the hands of this man,” Ali testified. “But the sexual assaults saddened me most.”

The judge repeatedly interrupted him.

“Did you personally witness rape?”

“Yes,” Ali replied. “I saw it myself.”

He described a group of young girls who had recently arrived at Nugra Salman prison.

"Mr. Judge, several girls who seemed to have just been brought to Nugra Salman, they were sitting in a circle and they were very pretty and shy and they had their heads covered. The policemen left, then came back with Ajaj, who knelt on the shoulder of one of them and then took two of the girls with him," Ali recounted.

Ajaj glanced back at Ali before lowering his head.

“What else did he do to you?” the judge asked.

“There was barely any drinking water,” Ali said. “He gave us bitter water like poison. He wanted us to die of thirst.”

Since 2006, I have written about the suffering of Anfal survivors. Even from hundreds of kilometers away, their stories became nightmares that haunted me. Had the judge allowed me a single question, I would have asked Ajaj one thing: How were you able to commit such cruelty?

Earlier that morning, at 7:30am, elderly survivor Reza Hassan Marf, who had traveled from Jalamord village to Baghdad, spoke to me in the courthouse yard.

“Most of my peers died before they could see Ajaj again,” he said. “But I lived long enough to face him.”

“What did he do to you?” the judge asked.

“We had no water,” Marf answered. “Soap, sink filth, and wastewater flowed from Ajaj’s room. He forced us to dip our shoes into the dirty water and drink it.”

“Why would they do that?” the judge asked him later.

“Because we were Kurds,” he replied.

One by one, Marf said the names of his children who had been imprisoned in Nugra Salman - and the names of those who died there.

“How did you bury the dead?” the judge asked.

“We dug shallow holes in the sand,” he answered. “Then stray dogs came and ate the bodies after we left.”

As more witnesses testified, Ajaj appeared increasingly distressed. He glanced resentfully at his lawyer, Shahid Mohammed, whose defense papers seemed powerless against the flood of testimonies.

Outside the courtroom, Mohammed admitted the difficulty of defending his client.

“Ajaj’s relatives asked me to represent him,” he said quietly.

“Did they believe he could escape this case?” I asked.

“No,” Mohammed replied. “But Ajaj insists that his confessions were extracted under torture. He says medical reports prove it.”

“What else did Ajaj tell you before the trial?” I asked.

“He said his military rank was lieutenant, not sergeant,” Mohammed said. “He claims his authority was exaggerated and his reputation destroyed.”

Mohammed tried to sound optimistic. He argued that some testimonies might be invalid because witnesses pronounced Ajaj’s name differently. My colleague Ali Jafi explained that in some Kurdish dialects, the letter “A” is pronounced like “H.”

Still, during the first session, Mohammed spoke only once - and it changed nothing.

I watched Ajaj closely: a man awaited by hundreds of dead souls buried beneath the desert sands.

His white beard and aging face no longer resembled the terrifying executioner survivors remembered. Wrinkles hollowed his features, making him appear far older than his years. This was the broken man Amin Samin had longed to confront.

I met Samin in late summer 2010, suffering from the unbearable pain of losing his entire family. Samin spent years wishing to see Ajaj again. Death reached him first.

Survivors accused Ajaj of feeding alcohol to children for amusement, and killing infants, hanging elderly men to death, and raping women and girls. But now, the once-feared commander sat trembling before the survivors.

“Look at me, Ajaj!” Ata Ibrahim Abdulqadir shouted in court, recalling the final moment he saw his sister Sahira alive.

“Look at him,” the judge ordered Ajaj.

“I lost seven members of my family,” Abdulqadir cried. “My sister Sahira died there. Dogs devoured the bodies.”

Ajaj lowered his eyes again.

Nugra Salman prison stood near the mass graves of the Samawa desert - the final destination for countless Anfal victims.

“There were pits prepared for us,” Soran Abdullah Haji told me before the hearing began.

“I was only 13 years old,” he testified later. “One night, while sleeping in the hall, I moved slightly and realized Ajaj was standing beside me. He struck me across the head with his rifle butt. My skull split open.”

Haji survived seven months and eight days in Nugra Salman

“Let him look at me, Your Honor,” he pleaded. “He gave us dirty water and rotten food. I remember more than 10 people who died there and were buried in the desert.”

Later, after a closed-door session between the judge, Fazila, and Ajaj - excluding even the lawyers - I asked Fazila why she requested privacy.

“There were brutal sexual abuses committed by Ajaj,” she explained quietly. “I needed to protect the identities of the victims.”

Fazila carried herself differently from many other survivors. Her courage reminded me of genocide survivors I had interviewed from Bosnia and Poland - people who spoke through pain with extraordinary clarity and dignity.

Among the witnesses was Ali Arif, a Halabja survivor whose family returned from Iran after Saddam Hussein’s promised amnesty, only to be arrested and sent to Nugra Salman

“Hunger and eye disease killed many people,” Arif testified. “Ajaj killed my uncle, Allah Karam, with a single cable strike.”

The judge paused.

“Did you say his name was Allah Karam?”

“Yes,” Arif answered.

The debate on the judge's understanding continued. He wondered how someone could be named after God.

Outside court, Arif told me another story too painful to repeat publicly, saying if you knew what Ajaj had done to a mother and son, you wouldn't bear it.

For every witness, one thing mattered most: making Ajaj look at them. His frail, exhausted face offered a form of justice to bodies and minds scarred for decades.

“My mother was breastfeeding my younger brother when Ajaj came,” Nishtiman Ali Khurshid, another witness testified. “He pushed a cable into the baby’s mouth, tearing him apart. Then he struck my mother’s chest with the same cable.”

She said over the years, her breast pain became cancer and now she has cancer treatment,” said .

Salma Mohammed Robitan, 64, described being whipped while nursing her infant son.

“Did your son die then?” the judge asked.

“No,” she replied. “He died the next day.”

Again and again, the judge asked witnesses about torture, rape, and the burial of bodies.

Twenty-six survivors testified that day. Their stories filled the courtroom with horror, grief, and memories of death. Many demanded the same fate handed to Ali Hassan al-Majid and Saddam Hussein. But the judge postponed the final verdict until the following week.

Such hearings offer survivors an opportunity to speak their pain aloud before the law. Yet more important than punishment itself is ensuring that no political system ever allows another Ajaj to emerge.

As survivors left the Rusafa Court of Appeal, many whispered the punishments they believed Ajaj deserved. Some wanted him burned alive. Others wanted him returned to Nugra Salman to die there.

But lawyer Ayad Kakeyi offered a quieter response.

"It's okay not to be executed. Let him spend his whole life thinking about death in his solitary confinement."

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