Tariq Ramadan in Chicago's Holocaust Museum

I along with three other people were invited to talk about Halabja and Anfal in The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center near the city of Chicago on May 4. We were asked to be at the museum nearly two hours before the start of the event so that we would be given a tour of the museum to explain the reasons behind and how the Holocaust crime was committed against Jews in Europe.

There was a mobile museum within the building. The mobile museum was from Israel, and is displayed in cities in the US every few months for people to see. This mobile museum is multipurpose. First, it educates people about perpetrators of the crime. It indicates to the world that Israel will not let those who commit crimes against Jewish people escape justice. It is also a reference to Israel’s intelligence capabilities, sophistication and precision to intimidate its enemies.

The mobile museum is specific to Adolf Eichmann who was a high ranking officer in the Nazi army. Eichmann was the architect of the collective transportation of the Jews to the extermination camps, where they were inhumanly gassed and killed during the Second World War. After the end of the war, like many Nazis, Eichmann hid, changed his identity and fled to Argentina in 1950.

For Israelis, bringing the perpetrators of Holocaust was a priority. Thus they began searching for Eichmann and other criminals. Some Holocaust survivors along with other Jews dedicated themselves to find war criminals. Based on intelligence reports gathered by Israeli Mossad Intelligence Service, Eichmann’s was located in the mid-1950s in Argentina’s capital of Buenos Aires. After Mossad confirmed his identity through its sources and photographs, in an operations with surgical precision, Eichmann was kidnapped and brought back to Israel to face justice in 1960. Eventually, Eichmann stood a trial and was found guilty of charges and sentenced to death by hanging in 1962. His trial was broadcast live to the world, which was a powerful diplomatic weapon to gain solidarity and sympathy for the Jews and Israel. Eichmann thus far has become the first and last person to be hanged to death in the history of the country.

As we continued our tour, Eichmann reminded me of Tariq Ramadan, an Iraqi Turkmen who allegedly supervised the chemical gas attack on my hometown Halabja in March 16 1988, killing five thousand people and wounding ten thousands more. Ramadan was arrested in Kirkuk by Kurdish security forces in February 2005. Ramadan had worked for a British photographer named Gary Trotter after the US-led invasion of Iraq. In 2006, Trotter and another journalist who both worked for the British Daily Mail came to Kurdistan to interview Ramadan in order to do a story about him. For Trotter, Ramadan was innocent and he was in fact in Kurdistan in order to facilitate his release rather than to do journalism. I worked for them as a translator. Then I set up an appointment with the head of Asayesh. After a brief interview, we were told that Ramadan had confessed his crime and signed on all crimes he was involved. He could not be interviewed because he was awaiting trial. The journalist was in shock when she came out of the interview and apologized to me, saying “I did not know I was misled by Trotter to come to do a story about a murderer.”

Unfortunately, in a complicated ordeal, Ramadan was set free, reportedly, by senior Kurdish officials in 2008 just weeks before facing a trial in Baghdad. To be fair to Ramadan, I am not claiming he was innocent or murderer. That’s for the courts to decide. However, setting free a potential war criminal without a court order is not just a crime against law and people of Kurdistan, but it’s against the whole of humanity. The release of such alleged war criminals paves the way and encourages more similar mass atrocities like Halabja and Anfal to reoccur as criminals realize they will not face justice.

In circumstances like this, we as Kurds are the main losers because Ramadan if proved guilty, it would be a significant evidence to help recognize the cases of Halabja and Anfal as genocide on the international level. We as Kurds continue to complain and ask the question of why Halabja and Anfal have not yet been recognized as genocide by the majority of capitals across the world. The answer is: We were not good enough in protecting or documenting our sufferings and tragedies. A person like Ramadan could have become the strongest evidence in support of genocide recognition again if he was found guilty.

We were given the tour about Eichmann by Garry Auslander, a retired social worker and a docent at the Holocaust museum. Mr. Auslander loved educating people about the Holocaust. He appeared to be a great supporter of Israel. He told us that they were proud of Israel because it’s good in carrying out its plans and does not allowing criminals to escape justice.

The only evidence in hand from Ramadan in Kurdistan Region was a photo he took moments after he was released in Sulaimani. But in the museum, everything related to Eichmann was documented and kept — even the flight tickets the Mossad agents used to fly to Argentina from ten different countries to arrest Eichmann. Additionally, there was documentation of how the agents changed their automobiles plates and even the injection syringe used to put Eichmann sleep in order to be brought back to Israel.

Of course Ramadan was not present in the museum, although his replica Eichmann was there, which reminded me of everything related to Ramadan. According to reports, Ramadan currently leads a comfortable life in Britain and that country has given a safe haven to a potential criminal. While in the museum, still I am captivated by the thought of whether one day Ramadan will be extradited to Iraq, where a court will acquit or convict him. If found guilty, we could possibly have a similar mobile museum named Tariq Ramadan and take it from country to another in order to educate people about the suffering and tragedies the Kurds have suffered under previous Iraqi governments, which can also serve as a compelling diplomatic tool to further the Kurdish cause globally.

Yerevan Saeed is a PhD student at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University in the United States. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.