Hussein Fires Defense Minister
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on Sunday fired his defense minister, a general notorious for ordering the brutal suppression of Iraqi Kurds, the state-run news agency said.
The report, monitored in Cyprus, did not name a replacement for Ali Hassan Majid, Hussein’s cousin and long considered one of the most powerful men in the Iraqi leader’s inner circle.
The Iraqi News Agency said Majid was named leader of the ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party organizations in Baghdad. It didn’t give a reason for the demotion.
Majid has earned the sobriquet “Butcher of the Kurds” for his brutal suppression of autonomy-seeking Kurdish rebels in the 1980s.
Thousands of Kurdish villages in the north were razed and some were targeted with poison gas.
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