Victims of Halabja Gas Attack Take Legal Action in France

Twenty victims of a deadly 1988 gas attack on Iraq's Kurdish town of Halabja filed a complaint in Paris Monday in a bid to shine the light on firms that helped Saddam Hussein's regime build a chemical arsenal.

Four of the victims made the trip, two of whom suffer from severe respiratory problems since the bombing which killed some 5,000 Kurds, in what is thought to have been the worst ever gas attack targeting civilians.

Their lawyers say they went through more than 100,000 documents detailing the different stages of Iraq's creation of a chemical weapons arsenal between 1983 and 1988 under Saddam Hussein's regime.

According to those documents, at least 20 firms involved in the project -- including two French companies -- "knew exactly what they were doing," said Gavriel Mairone, one of the lawyers.

But both him and David Pere, the other lawyer, refused to name the firms.

The legal complaint only revolves around 20 victims of the attack, which killed mostly women and children, but Pere says he represents 721 survivors of the tragedy who lost thousands of loved ones.

"What we want is for these firms to recognize what they did," said Mairone, who pointed out the victims were also planning on taking legal action in other countries such as Germany and the Netherlands.

The poison gas attack happened as Iraq's eight-year war with Iran was drawing to a close. With Tehran's backing, Kurdish rebels took over the farming community of Halabja near the border with the Islamic republic.

The Iraqi army bombed the area, forcing the rebels to retreat into the surrounding hills, leaving their families behind.

Iraqi jets then swooped over the small town and for five hours sprayed it with nerve agents.

Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known by his macabre nickname "Chemical Ali," ordered the gas attack.

He received multiple death sentences following the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, including one for the Halabja tragedy, and was hanged in January 2010.

The complaint comes after a Dutch businessman who sold Iraq chemicals used in the attack was ordered to pay 400,000 euros ($529,000) in compensation to some of the victims in April.