Iraqi president signs execution order for Chemical Ali (1st Lead)

Feb 29, 2008, 10:06 GMT

Baghdad - The Iraqi presidency approved the execution of Ali Hassan al-Majid, cousin of former president Saddam Hussein, for killing thousands of Kurds in Anfal campaign in 1988, media reports said Friday.

The death sentence of al-Majid is to be implemented in the coming 30 days, said the official Iraqi television channel al-Iraqiya.

Reports said the execution warrant was signed by President Jalal Talabani and his two deputies.

On June 24, 2007, Iraq's Special Tribunal sentenced Al-Majid, whose nickname is Chemical Ali, along with two other defendants former defence minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad and former assistant to the Iraqi army's chief of staff, general Hussein Rashid Mohamed al- Takriti - to death on charges of genocide.

Between 50,000 and 180,000 people were killed, by various estimates, in the Anfal campaign waged by Saddam against Kurds in northern Iraq in the waning days of the Iran-Iraq war.

In the campaign, the Iraqi army carried out a scorched-earth policy, including poison gas attacks and mass executions, against hundreds of villages in the Kurdish region in the 1987-1988 period.

Al-Majid, who defended himself by saying he was only following Saddam's orders, launched the attack against the Kurds on grounds that the campaign was aimed at Iranians who were allegedly centred in Kurdish areas and were threatening the national stability of Iraq.

During the reign of Saddam, al-Majid acted as his right-hand man when it came to striking down insurgents of any shade and getting rid of rivals.

In the course of his career as minister, commander and advisor to Saddam, al-Majid was one of the key figures in the regime. He played an instrumental role in the attacks on Iraq's Kurdish areas during the 1980s, the invasion of Kuwait and the suppression of the Shiite rebellion in the south in 1991.

Since the mustard and nerve gas attacks on the Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988 during which an estimated 5,000 Kurds were killed and which he oversaw, al-Majid has become notorious among Iraqis as Ali al-Kimawi or 'Chemical Ali.'

Al-Majid, who like Saddam, is from a humble background and has had hardly any formal education, was born in Tikrit in 1941.