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Iraq - Ali Hassan al-Majid verdict
Chemical Ali sentenced to death for Halabja attack
Article published on the 2010-01-17 Latest update 2010-01-17 12:56 TU
Ali Hassan al-Majid at a hearing in Baghdad in 2004
(Photo: US Air Force)
A court in Baghdad has sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid to death for gassing thousands of Kurds in 1988, in an attack which helped earn him his nickname of "Chemical Ali".
Al-Majid was sentenced to be hanged for ordering jets to spray a mixture of mustard gas and the nerve agents Tabun, Sarin and VX on the town of Halabja, in the Kurdish north-east of Iraq.
The five-hour assault is estimated to have killed 5,000 people.
Al-Majid has declined to express any remorse for the deaths. He says that the attack was necessary for Iraqi security because fighters from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) had taken over the area.
It was part of a campaign of bombings and mass deportations, which left an estimated 182,000 Kurds dead, in the 1980s when Iraq was at war with Iran. At the time the PUK received support from Tehran in its fight to split Kurdish areas from Iraq.
Al-Majid, a close cousin to deposed President Saddam Hussein, was a member of the decision-making Revolutionary Command Council and took control of state agencies in northern Iraq in 1987.
Since his arrest in 2003 he has been received four death sentences:
- In June 2007 he was sentenced to hang for genocide in the Kurdish campaign;
- In December 2008 he was sentenced to death for war crimes far war crimes during the 1991 Shia-Muslim uprising;
- In March 2009 he received a third death sentence for the 1999 murder of dozens of Shia in the Baghdad district of Sadr City and in the shrine city of Najaf.
Leaders of the autonomous Kurdish region welcomed the verdict Sunday.
"This judgment is a victory for all Iraqis, humanity and the Kurds because Halabja is the biggest crime of modern times," said Majid Hamad Amin, Minister of the Martyrs and Displaced in the Kurdish regional government.
"Halabja is not only a Kurdish case but it is an issue for all Iraqis and the rest of the world,"
