TEHRAN - Ali Baqeri-Kani, the head of the Iranian Judiciary’s High Council for Human Rights, says Iran has filed lawsuits in international courts against European companies that provided chemical materials to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, who used chemical weapons against Iranians in the 1980s, according to Press TV.

Baqeri-Kani noted the Judiciary has filed lawsuits for more than 200 of the victims of Saddam’s chemical attacks, and final verdicts have been issued for 70 of the cases.

He lamented that the same countries which “brutally” helped butcher the Iranian people through their “chemical weapons” are now “arrogantly” violating the rights of the Iranian people through their “economic and political” tools, making a reference to their use of sanctions and international institutions against Iran.

“The governments that are exerting the highest amount of pressure and the most extensive sanctions against the Iranian people today are the ones that provided Saddam with chemical weapons, prevented international action against the Ba'athist regime and prevented media coverage of Saddam’s crime,” he stated.

He also said the same Western countries that suffocated civilians in the Sardasht neighborhood now claim to champion human rights in Geneva fortresses.

The official went on to invite Western rulers to hold their next so-called human rights meeting in Sardasht, so that they closely see the effects of their atrocities against the Iranian people.

“In the Sardasht crime, although Saddam played the role of the executioner in the most criminal way, the approach and action of some Western governments were certainly not less than the role of the executioner,” Baqeri-Kani remarked.

Sardasht, a small city in Iran’s West Azerbaijan Province, was targeted by Saddam’s Iraq on June 28, 1987, when Iraqi bombers attacked four densely populated parts of Sardasht with fatal chemical gasses.

Iraq launched over 350 large-scale gas attacks along the Iran-Iraq border between 1980 and 1988 on combatants and non-combatants, leaving behind over 107,000 victims.

As many as 2,600 of that total died at the time, and more than 45,000 others were left in permanent need of treatment.

EE/PA