VIENAA (Dispatches) -- Iran’s envoy to the UN office in Geneva has called for perpetrators of a 1987 chemical attack on the Iranian city of Sardasht by Western-backed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to be identified and punished.
Esmaeil Baghaei Hamaneh, addressing a ceremony to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the chemical bombing, called for investigation, prosecution and punishment of natural and legal persons involved in the transfer of chemical equipment to Saddam’s regime.
The U.S. and several European countries, including Germany and the Netherlands, played an irrefutable role in the attack as they supplied Saddam’s regime with chemical weapons, he said.
Baghaei Hamaneh decried inhumane U.S. sanctions curbing medicine and medical supplies as “double injustice” against the victims of the Sardasht bombing.
He said all governments have a moral and legal responsibility to cooperate to compensate the victims and survivors of the attack.
The criminal prosecution and punishment of the perpetrators of war crimes and those aiding such crimes is a common duty, he added.
In the meeting, several video clips containing interviews with the injured and survivors of the Sardasht chemical attack were played, which showed the continuous suffering and pain of the victims, as well as their problems in accessing medicine due to the U.S. sanctions.
The chemical bombardment of Sardasht was conducted on June 28, 1987, almost seven years after the regime of Saddam Hussein launched a war on Iran.
During the war which lasted eight years, the Iraqi army continuously used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and civilians, leaving tens of thousands dead on the spot and many more suffering for years to come.
Over 100 people were killed in the Sardasht attack and thousands more were exposed to chemical agents.
After three decades, many of the survivors of the chemical attack still have to live with long-term respiratory and even psychological effects of inhaling mustard gas used in the attack.