Saddam Hussein Cousin Gets Death Sentence for Mass Killings

They sure keep the gallows busy over there.

As the judge pronounced five death sentences on him on Sunday, the man Iraqis know as Chemical Ali seemed a shadow of the merciless enforcer who oversaw poison gas attacks that killed thousands of Kurdish villagers in Iraq’s northern uplands nearly 20 years ago.

5 death sentences? That's a lot of hanging he's got ahead of him.

In his early 60s, severely weakened by diabetes, Ali Hassan al-Majid leaned heavily on a walking stick for the 18 minutes it took the judge to read guilty verdicts on counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

I'm not sure how I feel about the hangings of Saddam's ex-enforcers over there in Iraq but I figure so many people are dying in that country what's one more? And if anyone really deserves it, it'd be these guys.

Unlike his cousin Saddam Hussein, whose shouted defiance nearly drowned out the judge who sent him to the gallows last year, Mr. Majid offered no protest until the judge ordered bailiffs to lead him from the chest-high, iron-ribbed cage that serves as a dock.

"I sentence you to die"
"Yo mama!"

Only then did Mr. Majid muster a riposte, but it seemed to speak to relief that the waiting for his inevitable death sentence was over. “Thanks be to God, now I’m leaving,” he said.

No, you're just going back to your cell now. You'll be leaving soon enough.