Credits
12 minutes, 2005
Newsnight, BBC2
Producer-Director: Amir Amirani
Camera-Editor – Mohammad Albeygi
Programme Deputy Editor: Mary Wilkinson
Nominated for the Amnesty International Awards.
This was the first TV report of the chemical weapons attack on Iran by Iraq. An Iranian doctor in Tehran, Dr. Shahriar Khateri, approached the BBC with this previously untold or little known story. He runs the Society for Chemical Weapons Victims Support (SCWVS). As a result, this film was made for Newsnight.
Iraq launched a chemical attack on July 22, 1988, as villagers and hundreds of Muslim pilgrims gathered for a religious celebration outside a shrine in Zardeh, 400 miles west of the capital, Tehran. Around 275 people were killed. In nearby Sardasht, 120 people were killed and around 6,000 injured.
