Chemical Ali: Saddam's most infamous hatchet man

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Ali Hassan al-Majid, who went on trial on Tuesday over the brutal oppression of Iraqi Shiites after the Gulf War, is the most notorious of executed dictator Saddam Hussein's former henchmen and has already been sentenced to hang for genocide.

Majid earned the grim nickname "Chemical Ali" for ordering poisonous gas attacks against Kurds in a brutal scorched-earth campaign of bombings and mass deportations that left an estimated 182,000 Kurds dead.

In June, Majid, 66, was condemned to hang for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes by Iraq's High Tribunal, at the end of a genocide trial over the 1988 so-called Anfal campaign of which he was the architect.

"You gave orders to troops to kill Kurdish civilians and put them in severe conditions. You subjected them to wide and systematic attacks using chemical weapons and artillery," the chief judge had told him. "You committed genocide."

On Tuesday, Majid -- who was captured by US forces in August 2003 -- was in joined 14 other former Saddam aides in the dock on charges of crimes against humanity over the crushing of a 1991 Shiite rebellion.

Up to 100,000 people were allegedly killed when Saddam's forces, driven out of Kuwait by a US-led coalition after a 1990 invasion, crushed a Shiite uprising in a notorious bloodbath.

Like his cousin Saddam, Majid hailed from the northern town of Tikrit. He was the King of Spades in the card deck of most wanted Iraqis produced by the US military in 2003.

Considered Saddam's right-hand man, to whom he bore a strong physical resemblance, and a member of the decision-making Revolutionary Command Council, he was regularly called upon to crush regional uprisings.

He was most infamous for his role in northern Iraq. In March 1987, the ruling Baath party put him in charge of state agencies in the Kurdish area, including the police, army and militias.

As Iraq's eight-year war with Iran drew to a close, fighters from the rebel Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, with backing from Tehran, took over the farming town of Halabja, near the border.

In March 1988, Iraqi jets began to swoop over Halabja. For five hours they sprayed it with a deadly cocktail of mustard gas and the nerve agents Tabun, Sarin and VX.

Hundreds of Kurds were later seen lying lifeless in front of their homes, many with blood pouring out of their noses, caught as they tried in vain to flee.

An estimated 5,000 people were killed, 75 percent of them women and children, in what is now believed to have been the worst gas attack ever carried out against civilians.

New York-based Human Rights Watch has said Majid was responsible for the deaths or "disappearances" of around 100,000 non-combatant Kurds when he put down the revolt.

But Majid said he ordered the attacks against the Kurds who sided with enemy Iran at a time of war for the sake of Iraqi security and that he had not made any "mistake."

Last month, Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh said Chemical Ali would be executed in Halabja, although the date of his hanging has not yet been announced.

After Iraqi troops swept into Kuwait in August 1990, he was named governor of the occupied emirate, which the regime considered the 19th province of Iraq. As in the north, he swiftly and brutally wiped out pockets of resistance.

As war clouds gathered in January 2003 Chemical Ali left the country for the first time since 1988, visiting Syria and Lebanon in a bid to whip up regional support for Iraq.

At around the same time he was appointed governor of southern Iraq, charged with organising the region's defences and ensuring that the mass uprising encouraged by the US-led coalition did not materialise.

He was thought to have been killed by coalition bombing of his villa in the southern city of Basra during the 2003 war, but US officials were later forced to admit that he was still alive.