Iraq's 'Chemical Ali' sentenced to death again

Majid was sentenced to death in June 2007 for genocide after ordering the deaths of tens of thousands of Kurds during the 1988 Anfal campaign, when Iraqi forces strafed villages with poison gas, the source of his grim nickname.

Iraq's presidential council approved the death sentences of Majid and two other former senior military officials -- Sultan Hashim al-Tai, another former defence minister, and Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, former armed forces deputy chief of operations -- in February, after months of legal wrangling.

But the three remain in US custody and have since been charged with committing similar war crimes in southern Iraq during the Shiite uprising that followed Saddam's crushing defeat by US forces in the 1991 Gulf War.

Perhaps as many as 100,000 people were killed as troops carried out massacres around the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala and shelled towns and villages across the south.

Many Shiites who participated in the uprising say they had expected US forces to back them, but former US president George Bush instead ordered a halt at the Iraqi border, leaving the rebels at the mercy of Saddam's forces.

Majid, 68, who served as interior minister at the time of the uprising, was was arrested by US forces in August 2003.

In August 2007 an unidentified witness accused Majid of personally executing her two sons by tying bricks to their feet and throwing them out of helicopters into the Gulf after detaining them in March 1991.

Another witness, who also testified behind a curtain, said in September 2007 that Majid had overseen the execution of some 200 people in a sports stadium near the southern city of Basra, where troops shot them dead in batches of 25.

Majid has never denied or expressed remorse for his actions during the campaign against the Kurds, but he insisted he was not in Basra during the alleged massacre.

Since the March 2003 US-led invasion, experts have exhumed dozens of mass graves of victims killed in the two uprisings, and many Kurds and Shiites have expressed outrage that Majid has not yet been executed.

 "I think it is silly to try someone whose crimes have been proven on more than one occasion," said Sabah Ahmed, 32, a teacher in Najaf, one of the cities that bore the brunt of the crackdown in 1991.

"It should be enough that his nickname is 'Chemical Ali.' Everyone knows where the name came from."

Saddam was hanged in December 2006 for his role in the massacre of 148 Shiite villagers in the southern town of Dujail in 1982. Another three senior officials were also executed for their role in the killings.

But the New York-based Human Rights Watch, which extensively documented abuses under Saddam, has been critical of the tribunal, accusing it of making "serious factual and legal errors" in the dictator's trial.

Shiites, a minority in the Muslim world, comprise 60 percent of Iraq's population and were ruled for decades by Saddam's Sunni-led regime.