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'Chemical Ali' to appear in court for
Shiite rebellion trial
24.9.2007
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September 24, 2007
BAGHDAD, -- Saddam Hussein's notorious
hatchet man "Chemical Ali" is back in the dock on
Monday along with 14 other former regime officials
accused of crimes against humanity linked to the
crushing of a 1991 Shiite rebellion in Iraq.
Ali Hassan al-Majid -- due to be hanged shortly
after his conviction for genocide in a separate
trial -- and his co-defendants are accused of having
overseen a bloodbath in which up to 100,000 Shiites
were killed by Saddam's security forces.
The slaughter came in March 1991 after the troops
were driven out of Kuwait by a US-led alliance but
not destroyed.
Majid, along with then defence minister Sultan
Hashim al-Tai, and Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, former
armed forces deputy chief of operations, are
awaiting execution after being sentenced to death in
another trial over the massacre of up to 182,000
Kurds in 1988.
Majid, Saddam's cousin, was dubbed "Chemical Ali" by
Iraq's Kurds for his use of chemical weapons in the
campaign of bombings, gas attacks and mass
deportation. |
Ali Hassan al-Majid, first cousin of executed
dictator Saddam Hussein and also known as 'Chemical
Ali', 'Butcher of Kurdistan' sentenced to death over Kurdish genocide, AP |
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On September 4, their death sentences for the crimes
committed during the so-called Anfal campaign in
Iraq's northern Kurdistan regions were confirmed by
an appeals court and under Iraqi law they must be
hanged within 30 days.
On Monday, more Shiite witnesses are expected to
testify in the Iraqi High Tribunal against the 15 in
the so-called Shiite Uprising trial.
In the last session before a month-long break,
witness Laila Kathum accused Saddam's troops of
arresting her relatives and said Majid himself had
killed her two sons by throwing them out of a
helicopter.
Other witnesses have said that Saddam's troops
massacred people around the holy Shiite cities of
Najaf and Karbala and in the Hilla and Basra regions
of Iraq during the 1991 bloodletting.
Many Shiites who participated in the uprising say
they had expected US forces to back them, but former
US president George Bush instead ordered a halt at
the Iraqi border, leaving the rebels at the mercy of
Saddam's forces.
Several other witnesses have already testified of
being tortured in prison by Saddam's troops.
Officials say around 90 victims and witnesses are
expected to testify against the defendants.
Since the March 2003 US-led liberation, experts have
exhumed dozens of mass graves of victims killed in
the uprising, and their reports are expected to be
the key evidence during the trial.
Like Saddam, Majid hails from the northern town of
Tikrit, where he was born in 1941. He was the King
of Spades in the card deck of most wanted Iraqis
produced by the US military in 2003.
Considered the right-hand man of Saddam, to whom he
bore a strong physical resemblance, and a member of
the decision-making Revolutionary Command Council,
he was regularly called upon to crush regional
uprisings.
Saddam, driven from power by a US-led liberation in
April 2003, was executed on December 30 for crimes
against humanity in a separate case and charges
against him over the Anfal campaign were dropped.
Saddam's former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan
was hanged for crimes against humanity on March 20,
while the dictator's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti
and Awad Ahmed al-Bandar, the ex-chief of Iraq's
Revolutionary Court, were hanged on January 15.
AFP
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