Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
March 1, 2008 By Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Khalid al-Ansary
BAGHDAD — Iraqi leaders say they have found a way to execute Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali and one of Saddam Hussein’s most notorious henchmen.
Mr. Majid was sentenced to death last June, but approval of his execution follows months of struggling with a legal quandary that seemed to mean his hanging would also send to the gallows a respected former general whose execution was opposed by several top Iraqi leaders and American commanders.
Mr. Majid will be turned over by his American jailers and executed shortly, according to officials from Iraq’s three-member Presidency Council, which can ratify death sentences.
“The presidential council decree to execute Ali Hassan al-Majid was approved,” said Laith Shubbar, an aide to Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi.
The Presidency Council, which had earlier blocked the execution because of the case’s legal complications, consists of Mr. Mahdi, a Shiite; Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni; and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd.
“I feel that my father has been resurrected,” said San Jawarno, 36, of Sulaimaniya in Iraqi Kurdistan. Eleven of his family members were killed in attacks directed by Mr. Majid. “Now he is resting in peace in his grave because Chemical Ali will be executed.”
No one within the senior ranks of the Iraqi or American governments had sought to spare Chemical Ali. He led the Anfal operation in the late 1980s that killed as many as 180,000 Kurds. He earned his grim sobriquet for ordering chemical gas attacks.
But for some Iraqi and American officials, the problem was that his case, and his fate, was tied to that of the respected former general, Sultan Hashem Ahmed al-Jabouri al-Tai, a Sunni and former defense minister, who was also sentenced to death at the same time. Mr. Hashem was a military leader of the Anfal operation.
Mr. Talabani and Mr. Hashemi have refused to ratify the death sentence of Mr. Hashem, who they have said was a professional military commander. Many Sunni leaders also say he was simply a soldier following orders. Senior American commanders feared executing Mr. Hashem partly because of how his hanging would affect efforts to persuade Sunnis to reconcile with a government now dominated by Shiites.
But other Iraqi politicians are far less willing to spare those involved in atrocities carried out under Saddam Hussein, fearing that could set a precedent allowing others condemned for their actions to also seek pardons.
Now, it appears that Iraqi leaders believe that they have been able to legally justify detaching Chemical Ali’s fate from that of Mr. Hashem and another condemned former commander, Hussein Rashid. No details of the legal justification were available.
It remains unclear what will ultimately happen to Mr. Hashem, who continues to be held by the American military. Powerful Shiite political leaders, including allies of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, have demanded that he be executed.
After the 2003 occupation, Mr. Hashem fled to Mosul, where Gen. David H. Petraeus, now a four-star general and the top commander in Iraq but then a major general in charge of military operations in the north, praised him as a “man of honor and integrity” and asked him to surrender in a letter stating that by doing so, he could “avoid capture, imprisonment and loss of honor and dignity befitting a general officer.”
Mr. Hashem’s son has said that his father believed that the letter was a promise that he would avoid lengthy incarceration, and that American officials vowed he would be released within weeks. Aides to General Petraeus have said that he made no such promises, and that an offer of immunity was never extended.
Elsewhere in Iraq on Friday, gunmen in Mosul abducted the city’s Chaldean Christian archbishop, Faraj Rahho, spraying his car with bullets and killing two of his guards. The archbishop, 65, had just finished afternoon Mass.
Embassy Project Is Criticized
The chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform charged Friday that the large new American Embassy complex in Baghdad is riddled with critical deficiencies in its construction that contradict recent State Department assurances that the project is on schedule and within its budget.
In a letter addressed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Henry A. Waxman, of California, the committee’s chairman, cited a recent report by federal inspectors who found severe problems with fire alarm systems, water supply and construction.
Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman, said any costs associated with problems that did not meet the requirements of the contract would have to be borne by the contracting company. The main contractor is the First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting Company.
Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Iraqi Kurdistan and Mosul.
March 1, 2008 By Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Khalid al-Ansary
BAGHDAD — Iraqi leaders say they have found a way to execute Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali and one of Saddam Hussein’s most notorious henchmen.
Mr. Majid was sentenced to death last June, but approval of his execution follows months of struggling with a legal quandary that seemed to mean his hanging would also send to the gallows a respected former general whose execution was opposed by several top Iraqi leaders and American commanders.
Mr. Majid will be turned over by his American jailers and executed shortly, according to officials from Iraq’s three-member Presidency Council, which can ratify death sentences.
“The presidential council decree to execute Ali Hassan al-Majid was approved,” said Laith Shubbar, an aide to Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi.
The Presidency Council, which had earlier blocked the execution because of the case’s legal complications, consists of Mr. Mahdi, a Shiite; Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni; and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd.
“I feel that my father has been resurrected,” said San Jawarno, 36, of Sulaimaniya in Iraqi Kurdistan. Eleven of his family members were killed in attacks directed by Mr. Majid. “Now he is resting in peace in his grave because Chemical Ali will be executed.”
No one within the senior ranks of the Iraqi or American governments had sought to spare Chemical Ali. He led the Anfal operation in the late 1980s that killed as many as 180,000 Kurds. He earned his grim sobriquet for ordering chemical gas attacks.
But for some Iraqi and American officials, the problem was that his case, and his fate, was tied to that of the respected former general, Sultan Hashem Ahmed al-Jabouri al-Tai, a Sunni and former defense minister, who was also sentenced to death at the same time. Mr. Hashem was a military leader of the Anfal operation.
Mr. Talabani and Mr. Hashemi have refused to ratify the death sentence of Mr. Hashem, who they have said was a professional military commander. Many Sunni leaders also say he was simply a soldier following orders. Senior American commanders feared executing Mr. Hashem partly because of how his hanging would affect efforts to persuade Sunnis to reconcile with a government now dominated by Shiites.
But other Iraqi politicians are far less willing to spare those involved in atrocities carried out under Saddam Hussein, fearing that could set a precedent allowing others condemned for their actions to also seek pardons.
Now, it appears that Iraqi leaders believe that they have been able to legally justify detaching Chemical Ali’s fate from that of Mr. Hashem and another condemned former commander, Hussein Rashid. No details of the legal justification were available.
It remains unclear what will ultimately happen to Mr. Hashem, who continues to be held by the American military. Powerful Shiite political leaders, including allies of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, have demanded that he be executed.
After the 2003 occupation, Mr. Hashem fled to Mosul, where Gen. David H. Petraeus, now a four-star general and the top commander in Iraq but then a major general in charge of military operations in the north, praised him as a “man of honor and integrity” and asked him to surrender in a letter stating that by doing so, he could “avoid capture, imprisonment and loss of honor and dignity befitting a general officer.”
Mr. Hashem’s son has said that his father believed that the letter was a promise that he would avoid lengthy incarceration, and that American officials vowed he would be released within weeks. Aides to General Petraeus have said that he made no such promises, and that an offer of immunity was never extended.
Elsewhere in Iraq on Friday, gunmen in Mosul abducted the city’s Chaldean Christian archbishop, Faraj Rahho, spraying his car with bullets and killing two of his guards. The archbishop, 65, had just finished afternoon Mass.
Embassy Project Is Criticized
The chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform charged Friday that the large new American Embassy complex in Baghdad is riddled with critical deficiencies in its construction that contradict recent State Department assurances that the project is on schedule and within its budget.
In a letter addressed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Henry A. Waxman, of California, the committee’s chairman, cited a recent report by federal inspectors who found severe problems with fire alarm systems, water supply and construction.
Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman, said any costs associated with problems that did not meet the requirements of the contract would have to be borne by the contracting company. The main contractor is the First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting Company.
Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Iraqi Kurdistan and Mosul.