Iraqi authorities have executed Hassan Ali al-Majid, who was known as “Chemical Ali,” CNN reported Monday. Al-Majid was the cousin and right-hand-man of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
He served as Defense Minister, Interior Minister, and Chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. He received his nickname because of his affinity for the use of chemical weapons, most notoriously in the murder of at least 5,000 people in the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988. Another one of his nicknames was “the Butcher of Kurdistan.”
He was convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, and received the death sentence four times.
Al-Majid led the suppression of the Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq in the 1980s, in a what came to be known as “the Anfal campaign.” He is believed to have presided over the massacre of 180,000 people in that region of Iraq. Thousands of Kurdish villages were razed and an estimated 1.5 million people were deported.
United States forces captured Al-Majid in August 2003. He was sentenced to death in June 2007. He then received two more death sentences in December 2008, for his crimes against the Shiite population in the 1990s.
Last week he received his fourth death sentence and he was executed today (Monday).