Iraq's 'Chemical Ali' sentenced to death again

ArticleData Array ( [Article] => Array ( [article_id] => 1001283 [headline] => Iraq's 'Chemical Ali' sentenced to death again [abstract] => An Iraqi court sentenced Iraq's notorious "Chemical Ali" Hassan al-Majid to death over his role in Saddam Hussein's brutal crushing of a 1991 Shiite uprising, according to an AFP correspondent at the trial, his second death sentence. [keywords] => Ali, sentence, Iraq, Saddam [content] =>

An Iraqi court sentenced Iraq's notorious "Chemical Ali" Hassan al-Majid to death over his role in Saddam Hussein's brutal crushing of a 1991 Shiite uprising, according to an AFP correspondent at the trial, his second death sentence.

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.

 

[start_date] => 02 December 2008 | 08:52:24 PM [comments_allowed] => 1 [source] => AFP [commentCount] => 0 [video] => [image] => [audio] => [reporter] => [relatedLinks] => Array ( [1] => Array ( [id] => 1001241 [label] => Iraq WMD claim 'my biggest regret' [display_order] => 0 [type] => Article ) [0] => Array ( [id] => 1000940 [label] => Iraqi MPs approve US military exit pact [display_order] => 0 [type] => Article ) ) [relatedArticles] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [article_id] => 1001241 [headline] => Iraq WMD claim 'my biggest regret' [abstract] => US President George W. Bush says the 'biggest regret' of his presidency was the US 'intelligence failure' on Iraq. [content] =>

US President George W. Bush said in an interview that he came to office "unprepared for war" and that his "biggest regret" was the US "intelligence failure" on Iraq.

In a wide-ranging exchange with ABC television's World News Tonight, Bush also said he was "sorry" that the global economic meltdown was taking place and predicted that he would leave office January 20th with his "head held high."

The US president has been mired in record-low approval ratings after the botched government response to killer Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and amid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the world financial crisis.
  
"The biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq," Bush said 50 days before president-elect Barack Obama's inauguration. "I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess."

But Bush refused to say whether he would have ordered the March 2003 invasion if he had known that late dictator Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, calling it "an interesting question."
  
"That is a do-over that I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate," said Bush, who declared as recently as last week that Saddam's ouster was "the right decision then -- and it is the right decision today."

WMD claim later proved false

More than 4,200 US troops have died in Iraq since Bush launched the war after a months-long public campaign centred on the charge -- later proved false -- that Saddam possessed vast stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

"A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration," Bush told ABC.

Asked what his greatest accomplishment was, the US president replied: "I keep recognizing we're in a war against ideological thugs and keeping America safe."

'Unprepared for war'
  
Asked what he was most unprepared for when he took office in January 2001,Bush replied: "I think I was unprepared for war. In other words, I didn't campaign and say, 'Please vote for me, I'll be able to handle an attack.'"

"In other words, I didn't anticipate war. Presidents -- one of the things about the modern presidency is that the unexpected will happen," he said.

Bush, whose administration recently accepted a formal timeline for withdrawing from Iraq, also stood fast behind his refusal for years to set a pull-out timetable.

"It would have compromised the principle that when you put kids into harm's way, you go in to win," he said.

Asked about the global economic crisis, Bush declared "I'm sorry it's happening, of course," but rejected any effort to blame his administration for inaction in the face of growing concerns.

"I'm the president during this period of time, but I think when the history of this period is written, people will realise a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so," he said.

'Grief in soul'

Bush also described much of his time in office as "joyful" even though "the president ends up carrying a lot of people's grief in his soul during a presidency."

"I don't feel joyful when somebody loses their life, nor do I feel joyful when somebody loses a job. That concerns me," he said. "But the idea of being able to serve a nation you love has been joyful."

Asked what Americans would say when he left office, Bush replied: "I hope they feel that this is a guy that came, didn't sell his soul for politics, had to make some tough decisions, and did so in a principled way."

"I will leave the presidency with my head held high."
 

[content_type_id] => 3 [site_name] => World News Australia [articledate] => 2 December 2008 [articletime] => 2 December 2008 [display_order] => 0 ) ) [comments] => Array ( ) ) [winston] => test )