Posted on 09/08/2007 8:33:02 AM PDT by Lurker
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 that officials from the U.S. embassy in Baghdad had held a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the problem of lack of approval by the presidency council for the death sentences.
He did not indicate the outcome of the meeting. The Iraqi court found guilty five of the six defendants in the Anfal case and acquitted only one.
Death sentences were handed down against Chemical Ali, the cousin of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Hashim and Tikriti after they were found guilty of committing genocide against ethnic Iraqi Kurds. Saber Abdul-Aziz al-Dori, director of the former military intelligence, and Farhan Motlak al-Juburi, chief of the former intelligence in the Northern Zone, received life sentences. Former Mosul Governor Taher Tawfiq al-Aani was acquitted.
Anfal was an anti-Kurdish campaign led by the former regime between 1986 and 1989 and involved a series of military campaigns against the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters as well as the mostly Kurdish civilian population of southern Kurdistan.
Independent sources estimate there were 50,000 to more than 100,000 deaths in the campaign, in which chemical weapons were used, while Kurds claim about 182,000 people were killed.
Iraq's Criminal Court heard the case of the Anfal (or Spoils of War, taken from Surat al-Anfal in the Qur'an) campaign.
Charges against the prime defendant Saddam Hussein were dropped after his execution on December 30, 2006, four days after an appellate body upheld a death sentence by the court considering the case of al-Dujail, a small town in northern Baghdad.
The court had found Saddam and a number of his aides guilty of responsibility for the killing of 148 people following an attempt on Saddam's life in 1982, during the eight-year Iraq-Iran war.
On April 2, 2007 the chief prosecutor in the Anfal case urged the court to release al-Aani, extenuate a sentence for Dori and to hand down death sentences against the four others.
Allegra,
You are there, are things really getting better from your perspective? You have an insight that we over here lack, hwat is the sense of the people there?
Be safe! And THANKS!
Danae
Hand Chemical Ali over to the Kurdish women. They will cut him onto little pieces.
Where is Ramsey Clarke? I was sure he would be center stage, wringing his hands and gnashing his teeth while pleading for this scumbags life.
Good idea. We can pop the cork while the hangman is popping Alis vertebrae.
L
And, may our dear God send him to the worst ring of Hell!
Somebody tell me where they bury this guy, I need to pee.
That's real graphic. You must be a woman. Only a woman who has scraped the bodily functions off other humans day in and day can do that without flinching.:)
GRRRRRRRREAT news! Thanks for posting.
Where is the ACLU? ...where is Abu Ramsey Clark?
Why aren’t they defending one of their own who is about to hang? Hmmmm?
sarc alert
Nope. I was however a single dad for a while. Oh and I have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.
L
LOL...go Dad!
bump for publicity
LOL ............. you princess of the sandbox. How are you doing, cutey ... and how are you viewing things this week? Praying it’s progressing .. forward. And praying for Petraeus and everyone on our side.
Saw the Mook had some heartburn ... awwwww ....poor twisted porker.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070908/wl_mideast_afp/iraqunrestsadr_070908085924
Iraqi Bungee Jumping Ping.
Former Governor of Kuwait.
String goes into a bar.
Orders a beer.
Bartender says, “I’m not sellin’ to you, get out.”
Next day, String heads back to the bar.
Bartender says, “I told you yesterday, I’m not sellin’ to you. Get out!”
The following day, String rubs his head, crosses himself, and heads back to the bar, orders a beer.
Bartender says, “Say, haven’t I seen you before?”
String says, “....’fraid not!”
Hi STARWISE! This week? Baghdad has been so quiet, it's hard to believe this is a war zone.
The only noise I've heard was a distant firefight in the western part of town where 14 Mahdi Army scum went to meet their 72 virgins a couple of days ago. Oh, and a car bomb in town that failed to kill anybody except the idiot driving it.
This is no coincidence. This place is claming down.
Now Ramadan begins late next week and we are prepared for some fireworks during that time, as usual.
But the daily explosions, mortars and rockets we were getting for a few months just aren't happening now.
I pray that this holds and that this is the beginning of the end of it.
As long as they are NEW ones, any color will do.
And if you want to be in the spirit of the festivities, Iraq's flag has red, white, black and green in it. ;-)
Things are improving. Definitely going in the right direction.
See my Post #38 for more on that.
As for Chemical Ali and al-Tikriti, I haven't heard any confirmation that their necks have snapped. They tend to do these things after sunset and before sunrise, so perhaps it will take place in the wee hours. It is 10:40 p.m. here now.
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