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Iraq: Fight over Chemical Ali's execution
6.3.2008
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March 6, 2008
BAGHDAD, -- The Iraqi government is refusing
to execute the Saddam Hussein henchman and cousin
known as "Chemical Ali" unless the death sentences
of two other Saddam-era officials also are approved.
The dispute pits the government of Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki against the three-member
presidential council, which moved last week to block
the two other executions in what was seen as a
possible attempt to appease minority Sunni Arabs.
In the case of the executions, government spokesman
Ali al-Dabbagh said in a telephone interview that
al-Maliki's administration would not take custody of
al-Majid alone and that it wanted all three men.
The U.S. has custody of al-Majid as well as the two
others, Hussein Rashid Mohammed,www.ekurd.net
the former deputy
director of operations for the Iraqi armed forces,
and former defense minister Sultan Hashim al-Taie.
U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner said
Wednesday that no request had yet been made to turn
al-Majid over to Iraqi authorities. |
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, |
A court convicted al-Majeed
for his part in the crackdown that killed nearly
182,000 Kurds in Anfal campaign, including a 1988
attack with poisonous gas and chemical agents that
left 5,000 people dead in the village of Halabja.
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.
Last Friday, Iraq's three-member presidential
council - President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, along
with the Sunni and Shiite vice presidents -
endorsed the death sentence
of al-Majid, who earned the grim nickname "Chemical
Ali" for gassing Kurd civilians during a brutal
crackdown on their region in the 1980s.
The endorsement was thought to be the last step
before carrying out al-Majid's sentence - death by
hanging - within a month.
He and the two other Saddam deputies were condemned
in June after being convicted of genocide, war
crimes and crimes against humanity for their part in
the Kurdish campaign, known as Operation Anfal.
Al-Majid won little sympathy when his sentence was
handed down, but al-Taie and Mohammed were seen by
some as career soldiers who were just following
orders.
Many Sunni Arabs thought al-Taie's sentence was
evidence that Shiite and Kurdish officials were
persecuting the nation's once-dominant minority.
Saddam and many of his closest advisers were Sunnis.
Sunni leaders, including Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi,www.ekurd.net
launched a campaign to
spare al-Taie, and the presidential council last
week agreed not to execute either him or Mohammed.
Al-Maliki, a Shiite, finds that unacceptable.
"The prime minister refuses to split the death
sentences issued by the Iraqi High Tribunal," al-Dabbagh
said.
"He wants them to be carried out together. He
believes that the death sentences issued by the High
Tribunal are irreversible and unchangeable and the
(tribunal's) do not need the approval of the
presidency council, which has no right to change the
sentences."
It was not immediately clear what will happen if al-Majid
is not executed within the month his sentence is
supposed to be carried out, or if the presidential
council will revisit the two other cases.
Al-Majid would be the fifth former regime official
hanged for alleged atrocities during Saddam's nearly
three-decade rule.
AP | VOI | Agencies
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