Death penalty demanded for Saddam's cousin

Saddam Hussein's cousin and four other former regime officials deserve the death penalty for crimes against humanity during a 1980s crackdown on Kurds, an Iraqi prosecutor said today.

He asked for a sixth defendant to be released in the so-called Anfal trial in Baghdad, whose defendants include Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as "Chemical Ali," who allegedly ordered poison gas attacks against the Kurds.

Al-Majid, Saddam's cousin and the former head of the Baath Party's Northern Bureau Command, has acknowledged in court that he gave orders to destroy scores of villages during the Anfal campaign, saying the area "was full of Iranian agents".

If convicted, the defendants could be sentenced to death by hanging.

In his closing remarks, prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon asked the court to convict and give the harshest penalty to al-Majid and four co-defendants because they "did not have mercy on elderly people or women or children - not even animals or plants or the environment".

But, he said, Taher Tawfiq al-Ani, the former governor of Mosul and head of the Northern Affairs Committee, should be released because the evidence against him was insufficient.