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Kurdistan minister demands speeding up
Chemical Ali execution
29.2.2008 |
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February 29, 2008
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan region 'Iraq', --
Kurdistan Minister of Martyrdom and Anfal Affairs
Chnar Sa'd Abdullah called on Friday for
accelerating the execution of Ali Hassan al-Majid,
the cousin of the former Iraqi dictator president
Saddam Hussein, terming the presidential council's
endorsement of his execution as "a good step".
"We urge the central government to accelerate the
execution of Majid. The endorsement of the ruling on
Majid is a good step in the direction of restoring
legitimacy to the court that passed this decision,"
Abdullah, the minister in charge of the Anfal
campaign victims in the Iraqi Kurdistan region
government, told VOI.
Earlier on Friday the Iraqi presidential council
ratified the death sentence handed
down against Majid, known as Chemical Ali.
"The Presidential Council upheld on Friday morning
the death sentence against Majid, the former Iraqi
president Saddam Hussein's cousin," a presidential
source, who declined to have his name mentioned,
said.
On December 7, 2007 Abdullah said her ministry would
resort to the UN if the death sentences handed down
against defendants in the Anfal case were not
carried out.
She pointed out that her ministry would not accept
the intervention of any political party in judicial
issues.
A political and legal controversy unfolded during
the past months in Iraqi circles over carrying out
the death sentences against the three convicts in
the Anfal case. Senior Iraqi politicians,www.ekurd.net
including President
Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and his two vice presidents,
Tareq al-Hashimi, a Sunni Muslim, and Adel
Abdul-Mahdi, a Shiite Muslim, believe that death
sentences have to be endorsed by at least the
president and one of his two deputies, which did not
happen so far. |
Chnar Sa'd Abdullah, Kurdish Minister of Martyrdom
and Anfal Affairs,
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, |
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Talabani and Hashimi argue that officers in the
former Iraqi army should not be executed on the
grounds that they were doing their duty and
enforcing orders from the supreme commander of the
armed forces then, Saddam Hussein. They said those
officers could not disobey these orders.
Talabani has reiterated that Sultan Hashim Ahmed was
a "respected military man who should not be
executed."
On November 30, 2007, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
sent a message
to U.S. President George W. Bush asking him to hand
over the three persons condemned to death in the
Anfal case of genocide of ethnic Kurds during the
1980s.
The Iraqi Supreme Criminal Court's appellate body
had upheld last September the death sentences handed
down
in June against
three officials of the former regime of President
Saddam Hussein: Ali Hassan al-Majid,www.ekurd.net
Saddam's cousin, Sultan Hashim Ahmed, the former
minister of defense, and Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti,
the assistant chief of staff of the Iraqi army.
Saber Abdul-Aziz al-Dori, director of the former
military intelligence, and Farhan Motlak al-Juburi,
chief of the former intelligence in the Northern
Zone, received life sentences, while former Mosul
governor Taher Tawfiq al-Aani was acquitted.
Anfal was an anti-Kurdish genocide campaign led by
the former bloody regime between 1986 and 1989 and
involved a series of military campaigns against the
Kurdish Peshmerga fighters as well as the mostly
Kurdish civilian population of southern Kurdistan.
Anfal crackdown that killed nearly 200,000 Kurdish
civilians and Kurdish peshmerga in which chemical
weapons were used.
Iraq's Criminal Court heard the case of the Anfal
(or Spoils of War, taken from Surat al-Anfal in the
Qur'an) campaign.
Charges against the prime defendant Saddam Hussein
were dropped after his
execution on December 30, 2006,
four days after an appellate body upheld a death
sentence by a court considering the case of al-Dujail,
a small town in northern Baghdad.
The court had found Saddam and a number of his aides
guilty of responsibility for the killing of 148
people following an attempt on Saddam's life in
1982, during the eight-year Iraq-Iran war.
On April 2, 2007 the chief prosecutor in the Anfal
case urged the court to release al-Aani, extenuate a
sentence for Dori and to hand down death sentences
against the four others.
VOI
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