Many Iraqis have been celebrating this week, following Monday’s execution of 68-year-old ‘Chemical Ali’. Former defense minister, Ali Hassan Al-Majid, a cousin of deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, received a fourth death sentence on Sunday, January 19th, 2010. This time it was for ordering the gas attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja, during which an estimated 5,000 people were killed.

By Goran Baba Ali 

Kurds and Shiites, who suffered the most at his hands, particularly welcomed his death. But many Sunnis were also happy, says Abdul-Zahra Zaki, editor in chief of Al-Sabah newspaper in Baghdad. “Not all the Sunnis were against the verdict. Most of them had also suffered the brutality of Ba’ath regime. Even in Tikrit, the birth place of Saddam and Al-Majid.”

But the survivors of Halabja were not entirely satisfied. “We are relieved with the fulfilment of the sentence. But the case has not ended yet,” says Goran Adham, head lawyer for the Halabja victims. “We tried our best to prove that the gassing of Halabja was part of a chain of crimes the regime committed against the Kurds.” According to him, the further persecution of the inhabitants of Halabja after the massacre makes the case a part of the genocidal Anfal campaign for which Al-Majid had already received a death sentence.

Aras Abid Akram, one of the survivors who testified against Al-Majid, was disappointed with the verdict. “We hoped that he and his henchmen would be convicted of genocide. At the end of his verdict, I asked the judge: ‘Is this all that you have for the people of Halabja who lived through all this misery?’ But he hadn’t any idea what the essence of the case was, what the Kurds have gone through.”

Aras lost his parents, seven sisters, three brothers, two nephews, his grandmother, two uncles, an aunt
and six cousins. “But when I saw Al- Majid up close, I couldn’t hate him. He sat there so powerless and tired that I found him pathetic. They didn’t let me talk to him but I would have said: ‘Look at me, you killed all my family. But you are now sitting in this cage and waiting for your sentence.’ But his death isn’t so important. For me the rehabilitation of justice was much more important.”

Anfal Campaign
“I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community? F*** them! I will not attack [the Kurds] with chemicals just one day, but I will continue to attack them with chemicals for fifteen days […] Then you will see that all the vehicles of God himself will not suffice to carry them all,” Al-Majid said in 1987, in the run up to the Anfal campaign which he had planned to put a conclusive end to the Iraqi Kurdish resistance.

The campaign, headed by Al- Majid himself, took place between February 23rd and September 6th 1988. More than 2,000 villages were destroyed and an estimated 100,000 Kurds were killed - the majority of whom were non-combatant civilians, including women, children and the elderly. The Kurds themselves estimate that there were up to 188,000 victims.

In 2006, a Hague court recognised the Anfal campaign as a crime of genocide and convicted Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat of complicity in genocide. In the 1980s, Van Anraat had supplied the Iraqi regime with chemicals which were later used to manufacture the chemical weapons used against the Kurds.

The tribunal
Shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein following the 2003 Anglo-American invasion, the Coalition Provisional Authority - established by the multinational coalition forces to provide a transitional government of Iraq - created the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal. In 2005 it was incorporated into domestic Iraqi law as the Iraqi High Tribunal. This tribunal, for a large part financed by the US government, had jurisdiction over residents of Iraq accused of committing genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes between July 1968 and May 2003.

On December 13th, 2003 coalition forces captured Saddam. Between October 2005 and November 2006, he and seven other members of the Ba’ath party, including Al-Majid, stood trial on charges of crimes against humanity relating to the killing of 148 Shi’ites in the city of Dujail. The tribunal sentenced Hussein to death by hanging on November 5th, 2006 and, after losing an appeal, he was executed on December 30th of the same year.

Criticism
The execution of Saddam caused international condemnation. Cell phone footage of the execution was posted on the internet and showed Saddam as an elderly man being dragged to the scaffold.

The tribunal has faced further criticism for a lack of international standards; a chaotic situation caused by Saddam’s attempts to use the court as a public platform; and the kidnapping and murder of some of the defence lawyers. The role of the US in founding and financing the tribunal has also led to concerns about America having undue influence on the court. Another point of criticism was the use of the death penalty - one reason most human rights organisations have refused to cooperate with the tribunal.

But the court has its proponents, too. Compared to the legal conditions in most Middle Eastern countries and under the former Iraqi regime, emphasizes Al-Sabah journalist Zaki, the court is doing a good job. “There was a high level of transparency in the proceedings and all the legal rights of the defendants were guaranteed.”

As for Al-Majid, Zaki is not surprised by his death sentence. “The verdict was not unexpected as the man had committed big crimes according to any human measure. But since the execution of Saddam - the symbol of fear - Iraqis aren’t interested in the tribunal anymore. They are busy with their miserable daily life, the security situation and the shortage of water and electricity,” says Zaki.

Other cases
Al-Majid received an earlier death sentence in December 2008 for his role in the repression of the Shi’ite uprising after the Gulf War in 1991, and yet another in March 2009 for the mass murder of Shi’ites in the Sadr City district of Baghdad in 1999.

The Iraqi writer Mowaffk Al-Sawad is from Basra and is now living in the Netherlands. He participated in the 1991 uprising and only survived by chance.

He was injured and fled to his uncle’s house in a part of Basra which the Republican Guard couldn’t reach. “But two of my cousins were captured and executed in front of their house. The guards were raiding houses and taking any young men with them. They gathered most of the people in the yard of Southern Oil Company and brought them to the University of Basra to execute them. Al-Majid led the operation himself.”

“Victory of justice”
Al-Sawad managed to flee to Saudi Arabia where he stayed for four years in a refugee camp before he came to the Netherlands. He only followed the broadcasts of Al-Majid’s trial occasionally.

“I couldn’t stand look at those faces. But I am really delighted with the end of these tyrants. To hell with them. This is a great victory for people who suffered long under their oppression. It is the victory of justice and I hope will be the birth of a new epoch where murdering people is outlawed.”

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