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A graveyard in Halabja for those who died in March 1988 when Saddam Hussein droped chimical weapons on the city. File photo

Four-hundred and sixty foreign companies sold chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein's ousted Iraqi regime, yet the current Iraqi government-despite vowing to pursue those companies has filed no lawsuits in court against them, says Goran Adham, chief prosecutor in Iraq's Supreme Criminal Court.

The companies are American, Russian, German, Dutch, Japanese, Indian, Greek, and other nationalities, stated Adham. "We have writen down their names for the Iraqi Supreme Criminal Court," he added.

"The Iraqi government is delinquent in questioning those companies that sold chemical weapons to the Baath Regime," says Mohammad Ahmed, head of the Martyrs, Victims and Political Prisoners Committee in Iraqi Parliament. "On several occasions we've called on the Iraqi government to file lawsuits to question those companies," tells Adham.

Halabja, situated 81 km southeast of Suleimaniyah and 364 km northeast of Baghdad), was subjected to an airborne chemical weapons attack in March 1988 by the former Iraqi regime. The death toll was widely estimated at 5,000, with more than 10,000 injuries.

To this day, people from Halabja still suffer the aftereffects of the gas attack. Since 2007, 17 victims of that day have died.