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| New Chemical Ali death sentence | New Chemical Ali death sentence |
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| An Iraqi court has sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, to death for his role in crushing a Shia uprising in 1991. | An Iraqi court has sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, to death for his role in crushing a Shia uprising in 1991. |
| It is the second death sentence passed on Majid, a cousin of Saddam Hussein. | It is the second death sentence passed on Majid, a cousin of Saddam Hussein. |
| The court also condemned a senior Baath Party official, Abdulghani Abdul Ghafour, to hang for the same crime. | The court also condemned a senior Baath Party official, Abdulghani Abdul Ghafour, to hang for the same crime. |
| In February, Majid was condemned to hang for genocide over the killing of 100,000 people during the 1988 Anfal campaign against Iraq's Kurds. | |
| The verdicts were issued after a trial which heard harrowing testimony of how the Iraqi army crushed the Shia rebellion which followed Saddam Hussein's defeat by US-led forces in the first Gulf War in 1991. | |
| Witnesses told of mass executions and family members being thrown from helicopters. | |
| It is estimated that as many as 100,000 people were killed as troops carried out massacres around the Shia holy cities of Najaf and Karbala and shelled towns and villages across southern Iraq in 1991. | |
| Many Shia who participated in the uprising say they had expected US forces to back them, but former US president George Bush instead ordered his forces to halt at the Iraqi border, leaving the rebels at the mercy of Saddam's forces. | |
| Majid, 68, who was Iraq's former defence minister, was arrested in August 2003 following the US invasion. |