Baghdad, January 18: An Iraqi court, sentenced a close cousin to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to death for gassing thousands of Kurds in the northern town of Halabja.
“Thanks to God,” Ali Hassan al-Majeed, nicknamed “Chemical Ali”, said when the sentence was read, reported.
The Iraqi High Tribunal ordered the death penalty for Majeed for ordering the gassing of Kurds in Halabja in 1988, in which 5,000 Kurds were believed to have died.
Judge Abud Mustapha al-Hamani branded the gassing as “deliberate murder, a crime against humanity”.
Three other Saddam aides, including the former defense minister, were also sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison over the attack.
Majeed was captured five months after US troops invaded Iraq in March 2003 to topple the Saddam Hussein regime on claims of possessing weapons of mass destruction, a claim proved unfounded.
Sunday’s ruling is the fourth death penalty against Majeed.
He was sentenced to hang in June 2007 for his role in a military campaign against Kurds in Anfal in 1988.
The Anfal campaign, which ran from 1986 to 1989, reportedly saw the use of ground offensives, aerial bombing, mass deportation, concentration camps, firing squads, and chemical warfare, which earned Al-Majid the nickname of “Chemical Ali”.
Majeed was also sentenced to death in December 2008 for his role in crushing a Shiite revolt after the 1991 Gulf War.
He was further condemned to death in March 2009 for his involvement for the death and displacement of Shiites in 1999.
But disputes with the government of Premier Nouri al-Maliki have so far stalled Majeed’s execution.
Saddam himself was hanged in December 2006 for the killing of 148 Shiites following a 1982 assassination attempt.
Kurds Celebrate
The death penalty has drawn cheering applause from families of the victims.
“I am so happy at this verdict,” Shurnam Hassan, 45, who was attending at the court-room. told.
“I really would like to see him executed in front of my own eyes,” said Hassan, who lost her husband and two sons in the attack.
Dozens of Kurds gathered at a cemetery in Halabja following the verdict where they played music and cheered in celebration.
“I am happy at the decision but I am sad also as the court did not consider his crime to be genocide, as we did,” said Omeed Hamaa Ali, 37, a Halabja resident who lost his mother, three brothers and three sisters in the attack.
A close cousin of Saddam, Majeed bears a strong resemblance to the former president.
Considered Saddam’s right-hand man, he was a member of the decision-making Revolutionary Command Council.
In March 1987, Majeed was placed by the ruling Baath party in charge of state agencies in the Kurdish area, including police and the army.
As Iraq’s eight-year war with Iran drew to a close in 1988, fighters from the rebel Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, with backing of Tehran, took over the farming community of Halabja near the border.
As Saddam’s enforcer, Majeed ordered attack against the rebels to regain the farming community.
Majeed sasid he took the action against the Kurds, who had sided with Iraq’s enemy in the war, for the sake of Iraq’s security.
-Agencies