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BAGHDAD — Ali Hassan Majeed, known as "Chemical Ali," is set to be executed on Tuesday for his role in the deaths of up to 180,000 Kurds, an Iraqi judge said Monday.Munir Hadad, a senior judge of the Supreme Criminal Court, said the execution could take place anytime after 5:00 a.m. local time.

Baghdad, Sept 7, (VOI) – Three of the six defendants in the Anfal case will be executed by hanging on Saturday, a Saudi newspaper quoted the lawyer of former Iraqi deputy premier Tareq Aziz as saying. "The Iraqi Criminal Court notified Ali Hassan al-Majid, alias Chemical Ali, former defense minister Sultan Hashim and former chief of staff Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti that they will be executed tomorrow," lawyer Badie Aref Ezzat told Saudi newspaper al-Watan, published on Friday. The lawyer said he was told by the three convicts that they only wanted to meet their families before the executions. Ezzat said...

Three members of the former Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein -- including the man known as "Chemical Ali" -- will be executed within 30 days, senior appellate Judge Munir Haddad said Tuesday. The appellate chamber upheld their sentences of death by hanging, which were imposed in June. The three defendants are Hussein's first cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majeed, nicknamed "Chemical Ali;" Sultan Hashem Ahmed, military commander of the Anfal campaign; and Hussein Rashid Mohammed, deputy general commander of the Iraqi armed force, assistant chief of staff for military operations, and former Republican Guard commander.

BAGHDAD, Aug. 23 — One of Saddam Hussein’s most senior henchmen ordered two brothers to be thrown to their deaths from a helicopter after concrete blocks were tied to their feet, the men’s mother told a court in Baghdad on Thursday. The testimony came on the third day of the trial of Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, on charges of crimes against humanity. The woman, Leila Khadem Nasser, 56, said that she learned the fate of her sons from her nephew, who had also been held by the government. The three men and Ms. Nasser’s brother were arrested...

A WITNESS overnight accused "Chemical Ali", Saddam Hussein's most notorious hatchet man, of killing her sons by throwing them out of a helicopter during the crushing of an Iraqi Shiite rebellion. Laila Kathum, testifying in the trial of 15 Saddam aides accused of crimes against humanity over the repression of the 1991 rebellion in southern Iraq, vented her fury against Ali Hassan al-Majid, widely known as "Chemical Ali". Speaking from behind a curtain, Ms Kathum accused Saddam's army of arresting her relatives and said Majid himself had killed her two sons. "The army detained my two sons, my brother and...

Excerpt - BAGHDAD, June 24 — As the judge pronounced five death sentences on him on Sunday, the man Iraqis know as Chemical Ali seemed a shadow of the merciless enforcer who oversaw poison gas attacks that killed thousands of Kurdish villagers in Iraq’s northern uplands nearly 20 years ago. In his early 60s, severely weakened by diabetes, Ali Hassan al-Majid leaned heavily on a walking stick for the 18 minutes it took the judge to read guilty verdicts on counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Unlike his cousin Saddam Hussein, whose shouted defiance nearly drowned out...

BAGHDAD — Saddam Hussein's cousin and two other former regime officials were convicted Sunday of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to hang for the brutal crackdown that killed up to 180,000 Kurdish civilians and guerrillas two decades ago. Two other defendants were sentenced to life in prison for their roles in the 1987-1988 crackdown, known as "Operation Anfal." A sixth defendant was acquitted for lack of evidence. Death sentences are automatically appealed. The most notorious defendant was Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for ordering the use of mustard gas and nerve agents...

via translation - ALARM - Genocide Kurdish: death penalty by hanging for “Ali the chemical one” BAGHDAD - “Ali the Chemical one”, cousin of Saddam Hussein, was condemned Sunday to the death penalty by hanging by the High Iraqi penal court for the genocide having cost the life some 182.000 Kurds in 1988.

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq - Kurds bought sheep to slaughter in celebration and stockpiled generator fuel to keep televisions working for Sunday's verdict against Saddam Hussein's cousin, known as Chemical Ali, and others accused in a 1980s crackdown against them. Many in northern Iraq said they anticipate the harshest penalty possible against Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam's cousin and the former head of the Baath Party's Northern Bureau Command, who is accused of responsibility for using chemical weapons against Kurds in the late 1980s scorched-earth campaign to crush a rebellion in the north. The case — called Anfal after the codename for the...

Excerpt - BAGHDAD (AFP) - The Iraqi High Tribunal is set to give its verdict on Sunday on six former aides of Saddam Hussein accused of slaughtering 182,000 Kurdish villagers during a 1988 military campaign in northern Iraq. Ahead of the judgement, the defence team appealed to United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon to stop the trial which it said was marred by "errors." The most prominent defendant is Ali Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of Saddam who is widely known as "Chemical Ali" for allegedly ordering the killing of tens of thousands of Kurdish villagers with chemical gas strikes. He faces...

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi court trying Saddam Hussein's cousin — known as "Chemical Ali" — and other former regime officials for their roles in a 1980s military campaign against the Kurds said Sunday it would issue a verdict in two weeks. All face a possible death sentence if convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the case. The decision will be announced on June 24, prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi told The Associated Press after a short court session that he said was attended by the six defendants, including Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam's cousin and the former head of the...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Saddam Hussein's cousin acknowledged on Sunday he had given orders to destroy scores of Kurdish villages and the prosecution in the so-called Anfal trial introduced two dozen documents it said incriminated members of Saddam Hussein's regime in the campaign that killed tens of thousands of Kurds in the 1980s. "All the orders given to relocate people were my decisions...

Most brutal dictator of our time SADDAM w/ Quran, devout Muslim (just like Idi Amin) The media like to paint him as "secular". Well, let's just check some facts, Shall we? Saddam holds a Quran all the time during his trial (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9652810/ Saddam — holding a copy of the Quran he brought with him into the session and held throughout — replied quietly, “I said what I said. I am not guilty,” referring to his arguments earlier in the session). 1990 Interview on ABC's Diana Sawyer he so (ironicolly) says "The biggest sin a man can make is to forget...

Begun again lawsuit of Saddam, the prosecutor claims the resignation of the judge BAGHDAD - the lawsuit of deposed president Saddam Hussein, judged for genocide against the Kurds, took again Wednesday in front of the high Iraqi penal court in Baghdad, where the Attorney General asked for the resignation of the marked judge of laxism with regard to the Iraqi ex-dictator. Saddam Hussein and its six co-defendants were present in the room of the court, including Ali Hassan Al-Majid, called Ali the chemical one for his role in the chemical bombardments of civil zones. During five last audiences of...

The trial of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on charges of genocide against the Kurdish people during the so-called Anfal campaign in the late 1980s resumed today after a three-week recess. Saddam appeared in his trademark dark business suit and all six of his co-defendants were present, including Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for his alleged role in the gas attacks against the Kurds. ~ snip ~

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Cursing Saddam Hussein, a Kurdish woman told the former Iraqi leader's genocide trial on Wednesday she was horribly burned after aircraft bombed her mountain village with chemical weapons. "I lost my sight. My children lost their sight ... My house was razed to the ground. May God blind them all," said Adiba Owla Bayez, pointing at the former Iraqi president and his six co-defendants on the third day of the trial. Describing a spring evening in 1987, the 45-year-old mother of five said aircraft dropped bombs behind her house and she had immediately noticed a difference from...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Saddam Hussein's trial on charges of genocide in connection with a crackdown on Kurds has begun. MORE...

Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf ('Baghdad Bob') THEN ...Al-Sahaf’s daily press briefings in the lead-up to the war and in its first weeks led to him being nicknamed Baghdad Bob or Comical Ali (an allusion to “Chemical Ali,” the nickname of former Iraqi defense minister Ali Hassan al-Majid.) He gained a considerable cult following, with several Web sites devoted to his outrageous claims...as coalition troops stormed the capital, al-Sahaf declared, "The infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad."... NOW On 25 June 2003, the London newspaper The Daily Mirror reported that al-Sahaf had been captured by coalition...

<p>The former number two official in Saddam Hussein's Iraqi air force claims the former Iraqi dictator moved weapons of mass destruction from Iraq to Syria in the months preceding the current Iraq war.</p>

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein's feared cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," has appeared before Iraq's special tribunal as it steps up the process of questioning former regime loyalists over war crimes. Majid was one of eight aides to the former president to be questioned by investigators this week, officials said on Sunday, raising to at least 12 the number interrogated in the past 10 days. Majid last appeared before a judge in December. The new Iraqi government, facing fresh elections by the year's end, is keen to put Saddam and others on trial soon. But officials with...