Middle East News
'Chemical Ali' sentenced to death by Iraq tribunal (1st Lead)
By DPA
Jun 24, 2007, 9:19 GMT

Baghdad/Cairo - Iraq's special tribunal Sunday sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of Saddam Hussein and known internationally as 'Chemical Ali' to death for his role in the genocide against Kurds in the late 1980s.

Also sentenced to death were former defence minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad and former general Hussein Rashid Mohamed.

The court served life prison terms to Farhan Motlek Jabouri, a former chief of military intelligence, and Sabir Douri, also a top military intelligence figure.

One defendant, Taher Tawfiq A'ni, who was an assistant to Chemical Ali, was acquitted for insufficient evidence.

The trial began in August 2006. At the time, Saddam was also one of the accused, but he was hanged last December 30 on a guilty verdict from his trial for the massacre of Shiites in Dujail in 1982.

An estimated 180,000 Kurds were killed in Saddam's campaign under the code-name Operation Anfal, when the Iraqi army allegedly carried out a scorched-earth campaign against hundreds of villages in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq in 1987-1988.

During the trial al-Majid insisted on his innocence despite a mass of eyewitness, tape recordings and documented evidence against him. He said he was only carrying out Saddam's orders or else he himself would have been killed.