Iran Press/ Iran News: Major General Mohammad Baqeri, Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, said this morning (Tuesday) at the International Conference on International Legal Claims of the Holy Defense (Iran-Iraq War): "The martyrs sacrificed their lives to give us security and peace."
Baqeri considered the holy defense a very important issue and said: "The world should know what oppression and crime the Iranian people were subjected to and human rights claimants remained silent in the face of this crime and helped the criminal (Saddam) to commit more crimes than he could."
He emphasized that the Holy Quran emphasizes self-defense against foreigners and said: "Holy defense is a worthy name for the 8-year (Iran-Iraq) war, a war that was unjustly imposed on a nation that had just made a revolution."
The Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces said: "Saddam felt superior by equipping his army and thought that he could occupy a part of our land in a few days, but when he saw that he could not do it, he committed all kinds of crimes."
General Baqeri called Saddam's withdrawal from international treaties one of the illegal actions of the Ba'athist regime in Iraq and said: "They violated our country's territorial integrity and entered our country in violation of international laws and regulations. The responsibility for the war and the use of nuclear weapons is on Saddam. But the United Nations remained silent on the violation.”
He added: "Saddam attacked Iranian civilians 4762 times and martyred the Iranian people in the cities with long-range missiles and carried out 582 chemical attacks on residential areas.
General Baqeri said: "We have more than one hundred thousand chemical casualties, which according to international treaties, the use of these weapons is prohibited, but who gave these weapons to Saddam, someone other than the Europeans?"
The Chief of Staff of Iranian Armed Forces emphasized: "Saddam's government also treated the prisoners intolerable and in violation of international laws and regulations, and did not even show mercy to the Iraqi people. The chemical attacks in Halabja and other parts of Iraq killed tens of thousands of people. He destroyed 780 villages in Iraq and 40,000 houses in Kirkuk alone."
Referring to the support of various countries for the Ba'athist regime in Iraq, Baqeri said: "The United States, the Soviet Union and European countries such as France, Germany and Britain and the southern countries of the Persian Gulf and a total of 34 countries supported Saddam and provided military equipment and weapons."
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