by Farhad Pouladi
TEHRAN, July 20 (AFP) - Angered at being left off the charge sheet in the case against ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Iran on Tuesday wheeled out its veterans still suffering the consequences of chemical attacks during the 1980-88 war.
In a media event featuring a photo exhibition and patients still coughing and spluttering from gruesome wounds inflicted nearly two decades ago, victims pressed Iran's indignation over not meriting a place alongside Iraqi's Kurds and Shiite Muslims or Kuwait.
"I want our case to be presented to the court in Baghdad as soon as possible, just as Kuwait's case was presented," complained Ameneh Ebrahimian, a 66-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman and survivor of one of Iraq's largest chemical attacks.
"I want the world to know what happened to our beautiful town of Sardasht, of the day we were bombed and me and five of my children were gassed."
On June 28, 1987, Saddam's forces launched its first large-scale chemical weapons attack against civilians. An estimated 4,500 people were exposed to mustard gas in the target, the northwestern Iranian town of Sardasht.
Just a year later, Saddam used a cocktail of chemical and nerve agents against Iraq's own Kurdish minority in the town of Halabja.
With Halabja featuring on the charge sheet against Saddam when he appeared in court on July 1 for an initial hearing on seven charges of crimes against humanity, Iran was overlooked.
Iran responded by accusing arch-enemy the United States of dictating the terms of the charges, but nevertheless asserting it would prepare a dossier and welcome the head of the Iraqi Special Tribunal trying the ousted president, Salem Chalabi.
Saddam sparked an eight-year war with Iran when he attempted to profit from Iran's revolutionary turmoil by making a land grab into the oil-rich Iranian southwest in 1980. The ensuing conflict cost the lives of up to a million people, most of them Iranians.
Still not lost on Iran is that key United Nations member states, fearing the spread of the Iranian revolution, turned a blind eye to Iraq's use of chemical weapons.
According to Iran's Society for Chemical Weapons Victims Support (SCWVS), the organisers of Tuesday's hospital event, the 45,000 registered war veterans with chemical injuries cost the regime around 20 million dollars a year to support.
Ebrahimian's son, Hashem Karmian, described them as "Saddam's forgotten victims".
"Even though this tribunal has been set by the occupiers, we still have to present our case," asserted Ismail Bani-Hossieni, a 43-year-old cleric.
He was speaking with a hoarse voice, having suffered from an infected larynx provoked by a gas attack 18 years ago in southern Iraq's Faw Peninsula.
But in an assertion that echoed many calls within the regime -- and something that is likely to leave Iran disappointed -- he said "the main issue is Saddam's accomplices, such as US and Germany."
"The ideal court would be one set up by international bodies," he added.
Another victim from Sardasht, Ismail Ebrahimi, stood by a photo of himself as a nine-month-old baby with horrendous blisters and proclaimed himself "shocked" that his town was not even afforded a mention in the Iraqi court.
But ultimately, he said, he just wants "to see Saddam get what he deserves".