Hussein aide sentenced to death

The location was a secret. The timing was unannounced. The prosecutors were not identified as they stood silently in the chilly marble and granite courtroom, facing defendants secured in a steel pen.

For all the trepidation surrounding the televised conclusion Sunday of post-invasion Iraq’s biggest trial, it was a stooped man with a cane whom everyone focused on, and he needed no introduction as he was brought in to hear his fate.

Ali Hassan Majid, dubbed Chemical Ali for his role in the gassing of tens of thousands of Kurds in Saddam Hussein’s Anfal military campaign in 1988, was convicted of genocide and sentenced to death by hanging, the sixth associate of the former president to face the gallows.

The trial once had Iraqis glued to their TVs and was seen as an opportunity to acknowledge the nation’s violent past in the name of national reconciliation. Ten months and about 85 witnesses later, though, the rigorous security and the reactions of people who followed the case showed how little reconciliation has been achieved.

Many Kurds, who are concentrated in the northern region of Kurdistan, want greater autonomy. They are demanding a referendum on whether heavily Kurdish areas should join their region, despite resistance from Sunni and Shiite Arabs and the central government.

A proposal to allow former members of Hussein’s Baath Party and military to return to government and army positions also is stalled. Those involved in the negotiations say it is unlikely there will be agreements anytime soon on the issues, pressed by the White House as benchmarks to measure progress toward pacifying Iraq.

But a U.S. Embassy official acknowledged, “The legacy of the Baath Party and what it did for Iraq society still is not very healed, and there are a lot of exposed wounds on this thing.”

The legacy was clear inside the court, where two of Majid’s codefendants yelled objections as the judge announced the verdicts and sentences, and in the cafes and shops where Iraqis heard the news.

Majid was the most notorious of six defendants being tried for the Anfal killings. His cousin, Saddam Hussein, was the seventh but was hanged in December after being convicted of crimes against humanity for ordering the 1982 massacre of 148 Shiites from the village of Dujayl.

The other defendants were Hussein Rashid Mohammed; Sultan Hashim Ahmad Jabburi Tai; Sabir Abdul Aziz Douri; Farhan Mutlaq Jubouri; and Taher Tawfiq Ani. They were high-ranking military or intelligence officials except for Ani, who was a northern governor.

The charges against them stemmed from an Iraqi military offensive in northern Iraq two decades ago dubbed the Anfal, or “spoils of war,” campaign, in which as many as 180,000 Kurds were killed, according to prosecutors. During the trial, the defendants said they were acting under Hussein’s orders to target Kurdish rebels allied with Iran during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Prosecutors countered that the aim was to eliminate Iraq’s Kurdish population and that the victims included women, children, and farmers whose orchards were destroyed and whose livestock were shot dead. Iraqi government aircraft dumped mustard gas and nerve gas in the area, the prosecutors said, killing thousands. Others perished in detention camps or were gunned down and buried in mass graves. After Hussein’s ouster in April 2003, many of the graves were uncovered.

One by one, each defendant was brought into the courtroom Sunday to hear the verdict and sentence.

Majid, Tai and Mohammed were convicted of genocide and other crimes and sentenced to hang. Jubouri and Douri were sentenced to life in prison for war crimes and received additional sentences for forcing Kurds off their land and seizing their property.

The charges against Ani, as expected, were dismissed after the presiding judge said there was insufficient evidence. Prosecutors earlier had agreed to this.

Most Kurds interviewed Sunday declared the outcome just, and many called on the government to hang the defendants in Halabja, a Kurdish town where about 5,000 people were believed gassed to death.

The Halabja killings are to be the focus of another trial, which would have included Hussein and could include the Anfal defendants, if they have not been hanged by then. With the Anfal trial over, many Halabja survivors fear they never will get their day in court.

In Halabja, survivors and relatives of those killed placed wreaths on the graves of victims and, to celebrate the conviction, handed out sweets in the marketplace.

Araz Aibid, the leader of a committee representing families of Halabja victims, offered to house Majid in his home if the government would execute the former Hussein aide in the town. “It is a victory for the souls of the Anfal victims,” said Razgar Barzani, whose family was driven out of the city of Kirkuk in the 1980s during Hussein’s Arabization campaign to replace Kurds in the oil-rich region. “He should be handed over to the Kurdish people to kill him in Halabja itself.”

Another Kurd, Hama Aziz Shwani, said, “Let all the criminals like Ali Hassan Majid go to hell. This is the just verdict of heaven.”

Members of Iraq’s Shiite Arab majority, who also were repressed under Hussein’s Sunni Muslim-dominated regime, also welcomed the verdicts. Sabah Shayal Dalfi, a resident of the Sadr City district in Baghdad, said there was so much evidence against Hussein’s loyalists that no trials should be necessary.

Sunnis denounced the verdicts.

At a tea shop in Baghdad, several men said the trial was unfair and that the Kurds got what they deserved for not backing Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war. “If I were in charge, I would have hit them with chemical weapons as well,” said Abu Amir Saadi.

Raad Hadeethi said the trial was meant to settle old scores, not secure justice. He lamented conditions since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. “Under Saddam, life was good and we had security, we had peace,” he said.

The trial was the second to be conducted by the Iraqi High Tribunal, established in 2005 to hear human rights cases arising from Hussein’s rule. Most of the defendants, including Majid, listened quietly to their sentences. But two tried to shout over the judge as he read their convictions and sentences, which will automatically be appealed.

One was Tai, who in 2003 surrendered to a U.S. Army officer in hopes of leniency. That officer was Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, then commander of the 101st Airborne Division in Mosul and now the four-star general commanding the war.

Tai was led from the courtroom, yelling and waving his arms.

The other, Mohammed, said indignantly, “We defended Iraq!” The judge kept speaking as Mohammed yelled, “Long live the Iraqi people!”

Majid leaned on his cane and listened quietly.

“Thanks be to God,” he said afterward as he hobbled out of the dock.

Also Sunday, the U.S. military announced the deaths of two soldiers the previous day. It brought to 3,559 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the war began, according to icasualties.org, an independent monitoring group. At least 32 have died in the last week alone.

A suicide car bombing killed eight people and wounded 25 in the city of Hillah today, Reuters news agency reported. The Interior Ministry said 11 bodies were found in Baghdad.

In Baqubah, U.S. and Iraqi troops discovered an execution house and an illegal prison during the sixth day of an offensive there, the military said.

A 35-year-old Iraqi journalist was shot to death Sunday on her way home from work in Mosul, the Associated Press reported. She is the second female journalist to be killed in the northern city this month.

tina.susman@latimes.com

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Times staff writer Raheem Salman and special correspondents in Kirkuk and Baghdad contributed to this report.