Free Republic

In May 1988, a prison guard checked Taymour Abdullah Ahmad's name off a list and directed him to a bus idling in the Popular Army camp in Topzawa, southwest of Kirkuk. The camp was one of Iraq's grimmest prisons. During his month-long internment there, the 12-year-old Kurdish boy watched guards beating male prisoners senseless with lengths of coaxial cable. He had seen four children weaken and then die of starvation. He stood helplessly as a guard stripped his father to his undershorts and led him off to his death. So Taymour was not sorry to see the last of Topzawa....

<p>BASRA, Iraq (AP) - Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed ``Chemical Ali'' by opponents of the Iraqi regime for ordering a poison gas attack that killed thousands of Kurds, has been found dead, a British officer said Monday.</p> <p>Maj. Andrew Jackson of the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment told The Associated Press that his superiors had confirmed the death of the man who is also President Saddam Hussein's first cousin.</p> <p>Jackson said the body was found along with that of his bodyguard and the head of Iraqi intelligence services in Basra.</p>