Saddam's cousin 'Chemical Ali' to be tried in Iraq

Saddam Hussein’s cousin known as “Chemical Ali” and 14 other defendants will face charges over the brutal crushing of a Shiite uprising after the 1991 Gulf War next week when Iraq’s third trial against former regime officials gets under way.

Prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi said the trial would begin on August 21 and Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam’s cousin and the former defence minister, would be among the defendants while he awaits a decision on his death sentence appeal in a separate case.

After Saddam’s defeat in the 1991 Gulf War, Shiites in the South and Kurds in the North launched uprisings and seized control of 14 of the country’s 18 provinces. US troops created a safe haven for the Kurds in three northern provinces, preventing Saddam from attacking.

But the late dictator’s troops marched into the predominantly Shiite South and crushed the uprising, killing tens of thousands of people.

The charges include genocide, mass murder and crimes against humanity and the defendants will face a possible death sentence if convicted, al-Moussawi said.

It will be the third trial of former regime officials after the Dujail case, in which Saddam was hanged for the 1982 killings of 148 Shiites, and the trial of those accused of killing of more than 100,000 Kurds in a 1980s military campaign.

Al-Majid, who gained the nickname “Chemical Ali” after chemical attacks on Kurdish towns during the so-called Anfal campaign, was sentenced to death in that case, but will stand trial pending his appeal, al-Moussawi said.

Two others sentenced to death for the Kurdish killings – Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai, the former defence minister who led the Iraqi delegation at the cease-fire talks that ended the 1991 Gulf War, and Hussein Rashid Mohammed, a former deputy director of operations for the Iraqi armed forces – will also face trial in the latest case, he said.

Another high-profile defendant will be Saddam’s trusted personal secretary and bodyguard Abed Hameed Hmoud, al-Moussawi said.

The chief judge will be Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, who also presided over the Anfal trial, and the chief prosecutor will be Mahdi Abdul-Amir.

Officials in Saddam’s regime still face trials for their alleged role in other crimes. These crimes include the killing of members of political and religious parties, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the forced emigration of thousands of Shiite Kurds from northern Iraq into Iran, the execution of 8,000 members of the Kurdish Barzani tribe, and the destruction of the marshes in southern Iraq.