BAGHDAD: Saddam Hussein’s notorious cousin “Chemical Ali” was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging on Sunday for ordering the gassing of Kurds in 1988, killing more than 5,000 in an air raid thought to be the worst single attack of its kind on civilians.
It was Ali Hassan Al-Majid’s fourth death sentence for crimes against humanity in Iraq. The previous three have not been carried out, in part because survivors of the poison gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja wanted to have their case against Al-Majid heard.
Relatives of Halabja victims cheered in the courtroom when chief judge Aboud Mustafa handed down the guilty verdict against Al-Majid, one of the chief architects of Saddam’s repression.
Nazik Tawfiq, a 45-year-old Kurdish woman who said she lost six relatives in the attack, fell to her knees upon hearing the verdict to offer a prayer of thanks.
“I am so happy today,” she said. “Now the souls of our victims will rest in peace.”
In Halabja after the verdict, residents cheered and songs played from loudspeakers at a monument commemorating victims of the attack. Some in town visited the cemetery to remember loved ones who perished in the gassing. The jubilation demonstrated again the deep-rooted hatred many Iraqis feel toward the former regime.
Another senior figure in Saddam’s regime, former Foreign Minister Tareq Aziz, suffered a severe stroke over the weekend and cannot speak, his son said Sunday. Aziz was for years the chief diplomat of Saddam’s regime. He was convicted and sentenced to prison for his involvement in the forced displacement of Kurds in northern Iraq and the deaths of Baghdad merchants in the 1990s.
Aziz was taken last Thursday to a US military hospital in Baghdad for examination, said a US military official, Lt. Col. Pat Johnson. His condition is improving, and he is being closely monitored, Johnson said, declining to say more due to privacy concerns.
Al-Majid earned his nickname because of his willingness to use poison gas against the Kurds.
The 1988 killings remain a source of deep pain, particularly for Iraq’s Kurds. Many in Halabja still suffer physically from the effects of the nerve and mustard gas that were unleashed on the village at the end of the eight-year, Iran-Iraq War.
Survivors feel a sense of injustice that Saddam was hanged for the killings of Shiites following a 1982 assassination attempt on the late dictator in a town north of Baghdad, but did not live to face justice for the Halabja attack. He was executed in December 2006.
The chemical air raid is thought to be the worst single attack of its kind against civilians. Graphic pictures taken after the attack showed bodies of men, women, children and animals lying in the streets where they inhaled the gas. Survivors were covered by burns.
The attack has left many of the survivors with long-term medical problems such as permanent blindness, skin burns, respiratory and digestive problems and cancer, said Dr. Farman Othman, a doctor in Suleimaniyah who has treated a number of patients.
The attacks were part of repeated attempts by Saddam’s government to suppress the Kurds, who had long campaigned for autonomy from mainly Arab Iraq and staged a guerrilla war against Saddam’s military. The Kurds had also allied with the Iranians during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
The Kurds have since the end of the Gulf War over Kuwait in 1991 enjoyed a large degree of autonomy under the protection of US-led Western powers which enforced a no-fly zone over the Kurdish north of Iraq.
The court also convicted and sentenced other former officials to jail terms on Sunday for their roles in the Halabja attack.
Former Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Al-Taie faces 15 years in prison, as does Iraq’s former director of military intelligence, Sabir Azizi Al-Douri. Farhan Mutlaq Al-Jubouri, a former top military intelligence official, was sentenced to 10 years.
Evidence against the defendants included eyewitness accounts, official documents and films seized after the fall of Saddam’s regime, and military correspondence among commanders.
