IRAQ:ALI HASSAN al-Majid, the notorious "Chemical Ali", who orchestrated the mass murder of Kurdish civilians in the 1980s, is to be hanged, the Iraqi government confirmed yesterday.
Majid, intelligence chief, defence minister and cousin of Saddam Hussein, was one of three former officials sentenced to death last June after being convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for their part in the Anfal [ Spoils] campaign, which killed 180,000 Kurdish civilians and guerrillas. An appeal court upheld the verdict in September.
Confirmation of the death sentence by the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani - himself a Kurd - and two vice-presidents was the final stage in the decision to execute Majid. He must be hanged within 30 days, but an adviser to the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, said the execution would take place "within days".
Majid is held in a US detention facility, but no request had yet been made for him to be transferred into Iraqi custody.
Majid, one of the most feared and ruthless of Ba'ath leaders, achieved notoriety for his role in the Anfal campaign and the gassing of Kurds in Halabja in 1988. But he was also behind the brutal suppression of the abortive southern Shia uprising that followed the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991. After the US invasion he was listed as the fifth-most-wanted man in Iraq and was captured in August 2003.
Confirmation of death sentences is still awaited in two other cases: Hussein Rashid Mohammed, a former deputy director of operations for the Iraqi armed forces, and Sultan Hashim al-Tai, a former defence minister.
The latter, a Sunni Muslim, is the subject of high-level political disagreement. Maliki, a Shia, is said to back his execution, but Talabani and his Sunni deputy, Tariq al-Hashimi, oppose it on the grounds that it would cause a Sunni sectarian backlash that would damage attempts to promote reconciliation.
Saddam's execution in December 2006 sparked fury among Sunnis, who were outraged by a video showing the ousted leader mounting the gallows to taunts from official observers who were identified as Shia. His half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, a former intelligence chief, was executed two weeks later.
In the city of Mosul, meanwhile, gunmen yesterday kidnapped the Chaldean Catholic archbishop, Paulos Faraj Rahho, and killed his driver and two companions as they were leaving church.