Ba’ath-era atrocities against Kurds in focus as ex-warden faces trial in Baghdad

Rudaw

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Ajaj Ahmed Hardan, the brutal executioner at the notorious Nugra Salman prison in southern Iraq, is set to stand trial at a criminal court in Baghdad on Thursday after spending decades in hiding. The ex-warden had subjected Kurdish prisoners to systematic extermination during the genocidal Anfal campaign carried out by the ousted Ba’ath regime in the late 1980s.

Ayad Kakayi, a prominent legal expert and prosecuting attorney representing victims and survivors in the case, told Rudaw the high-profile trial “is scheduled for Thursday morning at 8:30 am [local time] at the Rusafa Criminal Court in Baghdad.”

Rudaw has learned that the Iraqi judiciary has issued 221 invitations to victims’ families from the Kurdistan Region’s Duhok, Erbil and Sulaimani provinces, as well as Iraq’s eastern Diyala province - home to a significant Kurdish population - to attend the trial and testify against the former warden.


Ajaj served as a supervisor at Nugra Salman prison in Muthanna province, near Iraq’s border with Saudi Arabia, where he orchestrated mass starvation, denial of medical care, and systematic physical and psychological torture of political prisoners and Kurdish detainees.

When he assumed his role in 1989, Ajaj transferred nearly 400 Arab detainees out of the prison and replaced them with 3,000 to 5,000 prisoners from the Kurdistan Region and Diyala.

Survivors recount his direct involvement in summary executions and deliberate neglect that led to hundreds of deaths, including children and elderly detainees, many of whom were later buried in unmarked mass graves in the surrounding desert.

Among those invited to testify on Thursday is Ata Ibrahim, 49, who was 11 when his family was taken to Nugra Salman, where his infant sister died of starvation and seven members of his family were buried alive.

“God willing I will go and give my testimony against Ajaj,” he said while standing by the gravestones of his family members, adding, “Whether it is tomorrow, one day or ten days after tomorrow, we will face the criminal Ajaj in court.”

Jabar Omar, head of the Martyrs and Anfal Affairs Directorate in Garmian, south of Sulaimani, told Rudaw that 15 individuals have been notified by the court.
“We selected individuals who can present strong cases and who were imprisoned in Nugra Salman,” he said.

After the fall of the Ba’ath regime in 2003, Ajaj faked his own death and evaded justice for decades, fleeing to Syria before later living under a false identity in Iraq’s central Salahaddin province.

He was finally captured in early 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.

Following his arrest, Iraqi security forces said Ajaj confessed to multiple crimes, including torture, starvation, and mass killings of Kurdish detainees, many of whom were buried in mass graves.

Despite their horrificness, Ajaj’s crimes form part of the much broader genocidal Anfal campaign launched by the Saddam Hussein-led Ba’ath regime.

Spanning February to September 1988, the campaign involved chemical weapons attacks, aerial bombardments, and mass executions. An estimated 50,000 to 182,000 Kurds were killed, and more than 4,500 villages were destroyed in the campaign, which culminated in the 1988 chemical attack on Halabja.