‘Chemical Ali’ sentenced to death — again

Los Angeles Times

BAGHDAD — It’s a sentence that Saddam Hussein’s notorious cousin, known as “Chemical Ali,” is used to hearing, and Monday he heard it for the third time: death by hanging, for a 1999 crackdown by the Sunni-Arab dominated regime on Shiite Muslims.

“Chemical Ali,” whose real name is Ali Hassan Majid, previously was convicted and sentenced to death for the killings of tens of thousands of Kurds in northern Iraq in the late 1980s and for a 1991 crackdown on Shiites in southern Iraq.

Monday’s execution order seemed routine to both judge and defendant inside the Iraqi High Tribunal that is hearing Saddam-era cases. Ali, accused in the Kurdish cases of sending government aircraft to dump mustard gas and nerve gas on thousands of victims, stood droopy-eyed in the defendant’s wooden enclosure, a gray mustache shadowing his small, down-turned mouth. The judge announced the guilty verdict and sentence, then tersely rapped his red folder on the desk as if straightening a deck of cards.

“Thank you, Thank you again,” Majid said sarcastically as the judge walked out.

He was one of three defendants convicted in the case, which stems from the Feb. 19, 1999, death of Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr. The Shiite cleric, a leading voice of opposition to Saddam, and his sons reportedly were killed by government agents. Nearly 20 years later, a surviving son, cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, emerged as the most prominent Shiite opponent of the U.S. presence in Iraq.

The al-Sadr killings led to raids on Shiite strongholds to prevent al-Sadr followers from gathering to protest his death. Dozens were killed and their homes destroyed in the days after al-Sadr was slain.

Acquitted in the case was Tariq Aziz, the former foreign minister and then deputy prime minister who was the most-recognizable face from the regime after Saddam himself. Because Saddam rarely traveled outside Iraq for security reasons, Aziz, with his thick white hair and oversized, gogglelike glasses, became the face of Iraq in the outside world. The judge declared the evidence insufficient to convict Aziz.

Iraq’s premier legal scholar, constitutional attorney Tariq Harb, said the finding was a promising sign for the government-appointed Tribunal, which in the past has been accused of bias against Sunni Arabs and others associated with Saddam.