Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali"

IRAQ. DEATH SENTENCE UPHELD FOR 'CHEMICAL ALI'

September 4, 2007: Iraq's top court said it has confirmed the death sentence on "Chemical Ali" and two other cohorts of Saddam Hussein convicted of genocide and they will be hanged within 30 days.
"The Iraqi Supreme Court has confirmed the death sentence on Ali Hassan al-Majid, Sultan Hashim al-Tai and Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti," court chief Judge Aref Shaheen told a press conference.
Asked when the three would be executed, Shaheen replied: "According to Iraqi law, sentence must be carried out withing 30 days, no more."
Majid, widely known as "Chemical Ali" for using poison gas against ethnic Kurds, was the executed Iraqi dictator's most notorious hatchet man, Tai was his defence minister and Tikriti was armed forces deputy chief of operations.
The three were sentenced to death on June 24 after being found responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Kurds in the so-called Anfal campaign of 1988.
An estimated 182,000 Kurds were killed and 4,000 villages wiped out in the brutal campaign of bombings, mass deportation and gas attacks.
"Thousands of people were killed, displaced and disappeared," Iraqi High Tribunal chief judge Mohammed al-Oreibi al-Khalifah said after he had passed sentence in June.
"They were civilians with no weapons and nothing to do with war."
Majid, 66, was the last of the six defendants to learn his fate in the Anfal case -- the second trial of former Saddam cohorts on charges of crimes against humanity since the fall of the feared regime in 2003.
He muttered only "Thanks be to God" before being led from the court.
He and the other two condemned men are currently on trial for their alleged roles in brutally crushing a Shiite uprising in southern Iraq in 1991, but the charges against them will be dropped once they have been executed.
Saddam's regime said the Anfal campaign was a necessary counter-insurgency operation during Iraq's eight-year war with neighbouring Iran.
It involved the systematic bombardment, gassing and assault of areas in the Kurdish autonomous region, which witnessed mass executions and deportations and the creation of prison camps. (Sources: Afp, 04/09/2007)