Chemical Ali will be hanged within days

A senior Iraqi official says an important powerbroker in Saddam Hussein’s defunct Baath party, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as ‘Chemical Ali’ for his role in gas attacks on the Kurds, will be hanged within days.

“We will receive Chemical Ali from the Americans in the next few days and he will be executed very soon afterwards,” Iraq’s deputy justice minister, Busho Ibrahim, was quoted as saying by The Guardian.

A former spy chief and first cousin of Saddam, “Chemical Ali” was sentenced to death on Sunday for ordering the attack on Halabja, which is regarded by many as the greatest crime committed during the 35 years of Baathist rule. It was the fourth death sentence the 68-year-old has received.

Considered Saddam’s right-hand man and bearing a strong resemblance to the former dictator, Ali Hassan al-Majid was a member of the decision-making Revolutionary Command Council and was regularly called upon to suppress rebellions. He was infamous for his role in northern Iraq.

Majid earned his nickname in 1988 when he ordered an airborne poison gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja that killed over 5,000 people, including many women and children.

On March 16, 1988, Iraqi jets swooped over the small town and for five hours sprayed it with a deadly cocktail of mustard gas and the nerve agents Tabun, Sarin, and VX. International outrage meant that Majid did not dare leave Iraq for the following 15 years. Finally, in early 2003, as war with the US looked increasingly likely, he visited Syria and Lebanon in an attempt to drum up regional support for Iraq.

In March 2003, Chemical Ali was appointed to head the southern region — one of four senior commanders reporting directly to Saddam Hussein.

A month later, British officials said they believed he had been killed in a coalition air strike in the southern city of Basra. But in June, then US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld conceded that he did not know whether he was dead or alive.

Two months later, US military officials announced that they had captured him. Majid is currently being held at the Camp Cropper detention center on the outskirts of Baghdad.

MP/HGL