A rchive Date
[ 07-04-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/04/07/59356-ap.html
British officers say 'Chemical Ali' dead
By TINI TRAN
Mon, April 7, 2003
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.
Maj. Andrew Jackson of the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment told The Associated Press that his superiors had confirmed the death during a briefing earlier in the day. Jackson said the body was found along with that of his bodyguard and the head of Iraqi intelligence services in Basra. Al-Majid was a first cousin of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who had entrusted him with defence of southern Iraq against invading coalition forces.
One of the most brutal members of Saddam's inner circle, al-Majid, in his 50s, led a 1988 campaign against rebellious Kurds in northern Iraq in which whole villages were wiped out. An estimated 100,000 Kurds, mostly civilians, were killed during that campaign.
He also has been linked to the bloody crackdown on Shiites in southern Iraq following a 1991 uprising following the Persian Gulf War. He served as governor of Kuwait during Iraq's seven-month occupation of the emirate in 1990-1991.
Al-Majid apparently was killed on Saturday when two coalition aircraft used laser-guided munitions to attack his house in Basra.
British troops on Sunday sent an armoured column deep into Basra. On Monday, they followed with light-armoured infantry - 50 to 75 vehicles and 700 troops.
Jackson said the discovery of al-Majid's body was one of the reasons the British decided to move their infantry into the city because with the leadership gone, resistance might fall apart.
Human rights groups had called for al-Majid's arrest on war crimes charges when he toured Arab capitals last January seeking to rally support against mounting U.S. pressure on Saddam's regime.
"Al-Majid is Saddam Hussein's hatchet man," Kenneth Roth, head of Human Rights Watch in New York, said at the time. "He has been involved in some of Iraq's worst crimes, including genocide and crimes against humanity."
Hazem al-Youssefi, Cairo representative of the opposition Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, described al-Majid as a standout in a regime of criminals.
Al-Majid was a warrant officer and motorcycle messenger in the army before Saddam's Baath party led a coup in 1968. He was promoted to general and served as defence minister from 1991-95, as well as a regional party leader.
In 1988, as the Iran-Iraq war was winding down, he commanded a scorched-earth campaign known as Anfal to wipe out a Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq. Later, he boasted about the attacks, including the March 16, 1988, poison gas strike on the village of Halabja, where an estimated 5,000 people died.
During April 1991 peace talks in Baghdad, the Kurdish delegation leader, Jalal Talabani, told al-Majid that more than 200,000 Kurds lost their lives in the Anfal campaign. Al-Majid replied that the figure was exaggerated and the dead were not more than 100,000, according to reports published in the Arab press.
After Iraq's 1991 Shiite Muslim uprising was crushed, Iraqi opposition groups released a video they said had been smuggled out of southern Iraq. In the video, which was shown on several Arab TV networks, al-Majid was seen executing captured rebels with pistol shots to the head and kicking others in the face as they sat on the ground.
He was no less brutal with his own family.
His nephew and Saddam's son-in-law, Lieut. Gen. Hussein Kamel, was in charge for many years of Iraq's clandestine weapons programs before defecting in 1995 to Jordan with his brother, Saddam Kamel, who was married to Saddam's other daughter.
Both brothers were lured back to Iraq in February 1996 and killed on their uncle's orders, together with several other family members.
Syria and Lebanon ignored international calls to arrest al-Majid when he visited in January. He dropped scheduled stops in Jordan and Egypt - both U.S. allies - and Egypt refused to receive him and the Jordanian government denied a visit was ever planned.
Saddam's inner circle was made up of relatives or clansmen like al-Majid, upon whose loyalty he could count.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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