March 1, 2008
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan region 'Iraq', –
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister
Nechirvan Barzani said on Saturday his government
did not support the execution of Ali Hassan al-Majid
inside the autonomous region.
Speaking at a press conference in Erbil, Barzani
said his government "does not support having Majid
executed inside the region,
and thought it was not necessary to carry it out in
Halabja, despite the Kurdish people's unanimous
happiness to have Majid hang."
Majid, A key member of the former president Saddam
Hussein's close cohorts, is notoriously known as
"Chemical Ali" for ordering the use of chemical
weapons in attacks against the Kurdish town of
Halabja in 1988.
On Friday the presidency board
ratified the death sentence
handed down against Majid, Saddam's cousin.
MP Safiya al-Suhair called on the executive
authorities to execute Majid on March 17, coinciding
with the 20th anniversary of the gassing of Kurds in
Halabja,www.ekurd.net
within a campaign known
widely at the time as Anfal (or Spoils of War, taken
from Surat al-Anfal in the Qur'an).
Anfal was an anti-Kurdish campaign led by the former
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 'northern Iraq'.
The campaign, in which chemical weapons were used,
The Anfal operation crackdown that killed nearly
200,000 Kurdish civilians and guerrillas.
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. |
Nechirvan Barzani, Prime
Minister of
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)
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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