“Chemical Ali” was arrested nearly seven years ago, near the beginning of the (second) Iraq war. He is a cousin of Sadsam Hussein who carried out (and maybe even initiated) the tyrant’s most serious crimes. His real name is Ali Hassan al-Majid, by which tag he has already been charged with and judged guilty of three other horrific assaults against the various peoples of Iraq.
This fourth death penalty establishes his centrality in the poison nerve and mustard gas attacks against Kurdish villagers in Halabja. The 1988 massacre took the lives of at least 5,600. A big harvest.
The sentence and the enthusiastic response from the population was reported by the Associated Press.
The use of gas warfare by Iraq was the second such usage since World War II. The first was in the war waged by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser against Yemen.