“The presidency has approved Chemical Ali’s execution,” the official said on condition of anonymity, adding the timing of the actual execution is still not decided.
Ali Hassan al-Majid, the former defence minister under Saddam, was nicknamed Chemical Ali after he ordered gas attacks on Iraqi Kurds in 1980s.
Genocide charges
He was convicted on genocide charges over the slaughter and initially sentenced to hang in June last year. Under Iraqi law, Majid and two other cohorts convicted for the so-called Anfal campaign against the Kurds in 1988 were supposed to have been executed by October, but legal wranglings have held up the process.
The other convicts are Sultan Hashim al-Tai, Saddam’s defence minister, and Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, his armed forces deputy chief of operations.
An estimated 1,82,000 Kurds were killed and 4,000 villages wiped out in the brutal campaign of bombings, mass deportation and gas attacks.
