'Chemical Ali' executed in Iraq

BAGHDAD — Saddam Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, who was hanged Monday, ordered the infamous poison gas attack on the northern Iraqi Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988 that killed 5,000 people and earned him the chilling moniker "Chemical Ali."

Al-Majid was executed a week after he received his fourth death sentence, the final one for the Halabja attack. He bore a striking resemblance to Saddam and was one of the most brutal members of the dictator's inner circle.

The general led sweeping military campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s that claimed tens of thousands of lives — wiping out entire villages in attacks against rebellious Kurds and cracking down on Shiites in southern Iraq.

He was one of the last high-profile members of the former Sunni-led regime still on trial in Iraq. His conviction and sentencing on Jan. 17 was his fourth death sentence.

Al-Majid was a warrant officer and motorcycle messenger in the army before Saddam's Baath party led a coup in 1968. He was promoted to general and served as defense minister from 1991-95, as well as a regional party leader.

In 1988, as the eight-year Iran-Iraq war was winding down, al-Majid commanded a scorched-earth campaign known as Anfal to wipe out a Kurdish rebellion in the north. An estimated 100,000 people — most of them civilians — were killed over less than a year. Later, al-Majid boasted about the attacks, as well as the separate March 16, 1988, gas attack on Halabja, where an estimated 5,000 people died.

Saddam had suspected the Kurds, a non-Arab ethnic group in northern Iraq, of siding with Iran during the 1980-88 war.

During the trials of figures in Saddam's regime, prosecutors played audiotapes of what they said were conversations between Saddam and al-Majid.

In one of the recordings, al-Majid was heard vowing to "leave no Kurd (alive) who speaks the Kurdish language."

He told the court that he used such language as "psychological and propaganda" tools against the Kurds, to frighten them into not fighting government forces.

He also told the court in that January 2007 hearing that he was not worried about a death sentence, saying "I will face death with open arms."

Al-Majid was also linked to crackdowns on Shiites in southern Iraq, including the bloody suppression of their 1991 uprising. In a previous trial, he was sentenced to death for that crackdown.