Saddam brother 'faces first trial'
 |  Barzan Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti appears in courtroom at Camp Victory, near Baghdad, in July 2004. |
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 Saddam Hussein's half-brother captured.
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A half-brother of Saddam Hussein is likely to be the first to face trial on human rights charges before the Iraqi Special Tribunal, according to the country's interim minister of human rights.
The tribunal has finished its investigation of the case against Barzan Ibrahim Hassan Al-Tikriti for crimes allegedly committed in the village of Al-Dujail in 1982.
"About 150 families were killed, and hundreds of families were deported from there, and they destroyed the village, they destroyed the orchards," Minister Bakhtiar Amin told CNN on Monday.
"It was real massacre in the beginning of the '80s while he was the head of the intelligence services."
The tribunal announced Monday the completion of its investigation against Hassan and four others for the Al-Dujail massacre. The tribunal said that all five were under investigation for other crimes as well, and that other people were under investigation in the Al-Dujail matter.
Amin said that Ali Hassan al-Majid -- known as Chemical Ali -- would probably be the next member of the former regime of Saddam Hussein to come to trial.
"The list of Chemical Ali's (crimes) is long and heavy, and there are millions of documents relating Chemical Ali's crimes of genocide and atrocity," Amin said.
Al-Majid is accused in the gassing of Kurds and Shias in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
"He was also involved in the destruction of Kuwait, looting, pillage, killing, torturing, and taking hostages in Kuwait during the invasion of '91," Amin said.
Amin said he hoped the trials would get under way quickly after the formation of Iraq's new government, noting that the special tribunal was separate from the government's judicial branch.
"It won't be a show trial," he said. "It will be a real trial because the Iraqi people want to know the truth and want justice to be done. It's for the history in Iraq and for the history of each individual in Iraq. They want to know who is in the chain of command responsible for killing their loved ones."
"Iraq turned into a museum of crimes, to a country of mass graves, and these issues need to be addressed and national dialogue is needed in this country," he said. He added that truth and reconciliation efforts "as in South Africa and Latin American and in some other countries could be useful to the Iraqi case."
In addition to Hassan, the special tribunal announced that it had completed the investigation into the Al-Dujail activities of former deputy prime minister and vice president Taha Yasin Ramadan, former chief judge of the Revolutionary Court Awad Hamad al-Bander al-S'adun, Abdullah Kadam Roweed al-Musheikhi and his son, Mizher Roweed al-Musheikhi, two local Ba'athists officials in Al-Dujail.
Amin did not say when their trials might begin.
Iraqi officials said another half-brother of Saddam, Sab'awi Ibrahim al-Hasan al-Tikriti, who shared a mother with Saddam, had been arrested in Hasakah in northeastern Syria and was handed by Syrian officials to Iraq over the weekend.
Amin said that al-Hasan had "been the father of terror operating from the other side of the border."
"He has been sending us killers and caused killing of over 4,000 Iraqis and wounding over 15,000 Iraqis," Amin said. "Sab'awi and his people have been responsible for mass murder from the fall of the regime up till now. And prior to the fall of the regime, he has also a long record of committing serious human rights violations and atrocity crimes."
Al-Hasan served as Saddam's personal adviser during his regime. He was No. 36 on the U.S. military's most wanted list and one of 12 names on the list who remained free. (Full story)
