January 26,2010 - Daily Star Iraq hangs Saddam enforcer Chemical Ali.doc

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Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Iraq hangs Saddam enforcer 'Chemical Ali'


By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Arthur MacMillan
Agence France Presse

BAGHDAD: Saddam Hussein’s notorious cousin and henchman “Chemical Ali” was executed Monday, Iraq’s government said, eight days after he was sentenced to death for the 1998 gassing of thousands of Kurds.
Ali Hassan al-Majid was better known by his macabre nickname and as the King of Spades in the pack of cards of most-wanted Iraqis issued by the US military in 2003.
He was “executed by hanging until death,” government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said. “The execution happened without any violations, shouting or cries of joy,” in sharp contrast to Saddam’s death on the gallows, he added.
The news, which was welcomed by Kurdish victims, came as three massive car bombs targeting hotels rocked central Baghdad, killing at least 36 people and wounding 71 in an apparently coordinated but as yet unclaimed attack.
Majid, who will forever be associated with mass killings, was sentenced to death on January 17 for ordering the gassing of Kurds in the northeastern town of Halabja which killed an estimated 5,000 people and was one of the worst crimes of Saddam’s iron-fisted regime.
“I was happy to see the news of the execution on television,” said Kamal Abdelkadir, 24, who lost his parents, five sisters and a brother in the atrocity and who continues to require medical treatment for his injuries.
Fadhel Rifat, 27, who now lives in Suleimaniyya, the eponymous Kurdish province in which Halabja is situated, was also just a young boy at the time of the attack.
“My father and many relatives died because of Chemical Ali,” he said. “I am happy that he is dead.”
Three-quarters of the victims at Halabja were women and children, in what is thought to be the deadliest ever gas attack carried out against civilians.
The conviction for the gas attack that came as the Iran-Iraq war drew to a close was the fourth time that Majid had received a death sentence.
Judge Abud Mustapha al-Hamani, handing down the ruling, branded Majid’s offenses as “deliberate murder, a crime against humanity” when the verdict was delivered amid muffled applause in the courtroom.
“Al-hamdulillah, al-hamdulillah [praise be to God],” said a stone-faced Majid, in a hearing broadcast on television.
Majid’s execution had previously been held up by legal wrangling. The first execution was due to have been carried out by October 2007 but delayed so as not to coincide with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Saddam, his close cousin, was himself hanged in December 2006 for the killing of 148 Shiite villagers after an attempt on his life in 1982. In contrast with Majid’s hanging, however, footage of that execution posted on the internet showed shouts of applause and barracking of the dictator as he died.
Majid earned his moniker for ordering poisonous gas attacks in a brutal scorched-earth campaign of bombings and mass deportations that killed an estimated 182,000 Kurds in the 1980s.
He had already been sentenced to hang for genocide over the Kurdish offensives when in December 2008 he received a second death sentence for war crimes committed during the ill-fated 1991 Shiite uprising in southern Iraq.
Last March, the Iraqi High Tribunal handed down a third death sentence over the 1999 murders of dozens of Shiites in the Sadr City district of Baghdad and in the central shrine city of Najaf.
Majid was arrested in August 2003.
He orchestrated the Halabja attack when in March 1988, Iraqi jets swooped over the small town and for five hours sprayed it with a deadly cocktail of mustard gas and the nerve agents Tabun, Sarin and VX.
Considered Saddam’s right-hand man and bearing a strong resemblance to the former dictator, he was a member of the decision-making Revolutionary Command Council and regularly called upon to wipe out rebellion.
In March 1987, the ruling Baath party put him in charge of state agencies in the Kurdish area, including the police, army and militias.
As Iraq’s eight-year war with Iran came to an end the next year, fighters from the rebel Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, with backing from Tehran, took over the farming community of Halabja, near the border.
As Saddam’s enforcer, he ordered the gas attack to crush the uprising. Majid said he took action against the Kurds, who had sided with Iraq’s enemy in the war, for the sake of Iraqi security and has refused to express remorse.

Baghdad hotel suicide bombs kill 36, wound 71

BAGHDAD: Suicide bombers attacked three hotels used by foreigners in the heart of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 36 people and raising questions about government pledges to keep Iraqis safe before a March election.
The latest in a series of major attacks in Baghdad could be a political setback for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has built his reputation on pulling Iraq out of war.
The bombs, which wounded 71, mirrored a series of coordinated assaults since August on what should be well-protected targets such as government ministries.
The first blast occurred near an entrance of the Ishtar Sheraton hotel, a Baghdad landmark on the eastern side of the Tigris River that has been attacked before. The shock wave blew open doors, smashed windows and sent thick dust swirling into the Reuters offices nearby.
A giant cloud of debris rose from the blast site as ambulances and fire trucks rushed to the scene. Helicopters buzzed overhead and soldiers blocked off entry.
Towering concrete blast walls protecting the hotel along the Abu Nawas riverside boulevard fell like dominoes.
The building has not been a regular hotel for years, largely housing company offices and some media organizations. But some adventurous international tour groups began using it last year.
Zina Tareq, an Iraqi journalist who was in her office at the time of the blast, said she dived under a desk with the five-year-old daughter of a colleague.
“We heard a deafening sound. The ceiling collapsed on us and the windows shattered,” she said. Another colleague was wounded.
The last major assault in Baghdad occurred on December 8 when a series of car bombs killed more than 100 people. On October 25 and August 19, a total of around 250 people were killed in suicide assaults on government buildings. The blasts appear aimed at undermining Iraqis’ faith in the government and security forces.
The damage was worse in another blast that went off near the al-Hamra hotel, which has been a hub for many Western journalists working in Iraq since the 2003 US invasion.
Interior Ministry sources said that men armed with silenced weapons attacked the hotel guards just as a Kia van laden with explosives broke through the gates and detonated.
The blast ripped through a residential area near the Hamra, knocking down walls and leaving mounds of concrete blocks and rubble in front of the exposed interiors of homes.
The third bomb exploded near the Babylon hotel. The area around the hotel has been hit several times in the past year by mortar or rocket fire aimed at the US embassy, located across the river in the fortified Green Zone. – Reuters


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