Hajaj Ahmed Hardan, the warden of the infamous Nuqra Salman prison in Iraq’s al-Muthanna province, has confessed to multiple crimes including torture, rape and killing of Kurdish prisoners who were imprisoned during Anfal campaign in the late 80s.
"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 told the state-run al-Sabah newspaper in an interview published on Thursday.
Often referred to as Hajaj or Ajaj by families of victims, he was born in Salahaddin province and graduated from National Security College. He held various positions in security directorates across Iraq until he became the warden of Nuqra Salman prison in late 80s.
"I was a little girl when I lost my father, mother, and infant brother in Nuqrat al-Salman prison. We ate scraps, buried our children with our hands near the walls, and were subjected to daily rape and humiliation," Anfal survivor Fazila Hussein recounted her horrific experience in this prison. She was released in the 90s under a general amnesty.
Fadhila has stressed, in her interview with al-Sabah newspaper, that these individuals need to be held accountable to their actions, including those unaccounted for, because “justice is a right for victims.”
Hajaj admitted, in his interview with the newspaper, that he used “daily rape of detainees as a tool of mass murder.”
He added that when he assumed his position as warden in 1989, he moved nearly 400 Arab detainees out of the prison and replaced them with 3000 prisoners from Erbil and Sulaimani.
Hajaj was arrested in recent weeks following a months-long investigation. The Iraqi National Security Service (INSS) described him as “one of the most wanted henchmen of the former regime” of Saddam Hussein, saying he had been living in Salahaddin province and working in animal husbandry.
More than 182,000 people were killed and over 4,500 villages were destroyed in eight phases of the Anfal campaign that culminated with the chemical weapon attack on Halabja.
