Media

Execution of Chemical Ali delayed in Baghdad

IOL News
October 4 2007

Baghdad - Iraq on Thursday delayed the execution for genocide of “Chemical Ali” as a separate trial heard horrific testimony of the alleged effects of his brutal 1991 crackdown on a Shi’a uprising.

Ali Hassan al-Majid, whose death sentence was upheld by the supreme court one month ago for presiding over the mass killings of Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s, should have been executed under Iraqi law by the end of Thursday.

Asked if Majid would be executed within that timeframe, a senior government official told AFP: “Absolutely not.

“The Iraqi government has not made up its mind, the prime minister has not given us the green light yet,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

In the separate Shi’a uprising trial, Majid and 14 co-defendants are accused of having overseen a bloodbath in which up to 100 000 people were killed by Saddam Hussein’s security forces.

The slaughter came in March 1991 after Iraqi occupation troops were driven out of Kuwait by a US-led alliance in the Gulf War.

Testifying on Thursday was Baroness Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne, a member of the European parliament and a former British MP between 1987 and 1997.

Nicholson said that when she travelled to Iraqi refugee camps in neighbouring Iran in August, the effects of the brutal crackdown were still visible.

“During my visits to the refugee camps, I saw many, many, many, people with injuries. I am not a medical professional but the injuries were caused by bullets, bombs, chemical weapons and the high impact of houses tumbling.”

Asked how many cases she had seen that appeared to be from chemical attacks, she replied: “At least 30.”

Nicholson provided a graphic account of what she witnessed and heard in the camps that were crammed full of almost 100 000 Iraqi refugees.

“The victims were telling me about yellow clouds that destroyed their kidneys and insides. I was told by medical experts later that that meant mustard gas.”

She went on to describe what she saw at a hotel that had become a makeshift hospital to care for the wounded.

“Most of the men had been too sick to move. One had both his eyelids burnt as well as burns all over his body from napalm,” she said, adding that he was a primary school teacher with no political affiliation.

“Another had his stomach dangling outside his body on the side of his bed.”

Majid, Saddam’s cousin and notorious hatchet man, had earlier in the trial been accused of ordering villagers to be executed in batches of 25 as he brutally crushed the Shi’a rebellion.

The 66-year-old earned the grim nickname “Chemical Ali” for ordering poison gas attacks against Kurds in a brutal scorched-earth campaign of bombings and mass deportations that left an estimated 182 000 people dead.

Two co-defendants in the latest trial - former defence minister Sultan Hashim al-Tai, and Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, former armed forces deputy chief of operations - are also awaiting execution after being sentenced to death along with Majid for that massacre in 1988.

The government has indicated it is unwilling to carry out their executions until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in about 10 days’ time and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has said he is consulting lawyers.