‘Chemical Ali’ is executed by Iraqi government

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi government Monday hanged Ali Hassan Majid, one of the most notorious figures from Saddam Hussein’s regime, who had earned the nickname “Chemical Ali” for his gassing of the Kurds in the late 1980s.

Majid was executed after being sentenced to death in
four cases brought before an Iraqi criminal court for the killing of
Kurds and Shiites during the rule of Saddam, his first cousin.

The hanging was announced by government spokesman Ali Dabbagh on Iraqi television.

Monday’s execution was carried out after a final
guilty verdict was rendered against him last week for the 1988 gassing
of Kurds in the northern Iraqi town of Halabja, an attack that killed
as many as 5,000 people and came to symbolize Saddam’s brutal methods.

The execution was carried out on the same day militants bombed three hotels around Baghdad. It was unclear if there was any connection between the two events.

Later, state television broadcast two pictures of
Majid. One photo showed him clothed in an orange-red jumpsuit with his
face uncovered. In the second picture, Majid wore a black hood and was
flanked by two masked men.

U.S. forces captured Majid in August 2003 and he was first sentenced to death in June 2007
for his role in the broad military campaign against the Kurds that was
called Anfal, Arabic for the “spoils of war.” The offensive lasted from
1987 to 1988 and saw up to 182,000 people killed, villages razed and
families herded into internment camps.

Majid received another death sentence for his involvement in the suppression of an uprising among Iraq’s Shiite majority after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. That revolt ended with thousands killed and many buried in mass graves.

The Iraqi judiciary also sentenced him to death for
his role in quelling a Shiite revolt after Grand Ayatollah Mohammed
Sadeq Sadr was killed in 1999 and his supporters rioted.

In court, Majid had presented an image in stark
contrast to his reputation as Saddam’s bloodthirsty crony: a thin
figure with gray hair who propped himself up with a cane.

The fate of two of Majid’s defendants in the Anfal case remains undecided. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and senior Sunni politicians oppose the death sentence handed to Sultan Hashim Tao,
a former defense minister and commander in the north during the Anfal
campaign. Hashim surrendered himself to American forces in 2003 and may
have collaborated in some form with the U.S. military and Iraqi
opposition before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. His supporters argue
he was following orders during the Anfal campaign, while many of the
country’s Shiite elite believe he should be executed.

Kurdish politicians applauded the death sentence against Majid.

“I hope everyone who is a criminal and commits these big crimes will be punished,” said parliament member Mahmoud Othman, a Kurd.

But Othman lamented the one sore point that hung over the Anfal and Halabja trials: the fact that Saddam had been hanged in December 2006 and was never brought to court for his actions against the Kurds.

“I think the wrong thing in all this process was that Saddam Hussein was quickly executed,” Othman said. “Everything was ordered by him. He
should have been left alive to see the trials and to talk about the
secrets and who helped him from outside.”

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