Ali Hassan al - Majid Ali Hassan Abd al - Majid al - Tikriti ( ; ; 30 November 1941 – 25 January 2010 ) was a Ba ' athist Iraqi Defense Minister , Interior Minister , military commander and chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service . He was also the governor of annexed Kuwait , during the Persian Gulf War . A first cousin of former Ba ' athist Iraqi President Saddam Hussein , he became notorious in the 1980s and 1990s for his role in the Iraqi government ' s campaigns against internal opposition forces , namely the ethnic Kurdish rebels of the north , and the Shia religious dissidents of the south . Repressive measures included deportations and mass killings ; al - Majid was dubbed " Chemical Ali " by Iraqis for his use of chemical weapons in attacks against the Kurds . Al - Majid was captured following the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was charged with war crime s , crimes against humanity and genocide . He was convicted in June 2007 and was sentenced to death for crimes of genocide against the Kurds committed in the al - Anfal campaign of the 1980s . His appeal of the death sentence was rejected on 4 September 2007 , and he was sentenced to death for the fourth time on 17 January 2010 and was hanged eight days later , on 25 January 2010 . Early life . Ali Hassan al - Majid is thought to have been born in 1941 in al - Awja near Tikrit , though he claimed in court that he was born three years later in 1944 . The U . S . , the United Nations and the Bank of England have also listed an alternative birth year of 1943 . 1939 and 1940 have also emerged as possible birth years . Still , official Iraqi court documents and the vast majority of journalistic obituaries cite 1941 as his approximate year of birth . He was a member of the Bejat clan of the al - Bu Nasir tribe , to which his elder cousin Saddam Hussein also belonged ; Saddam later relied heavily on the clan to fill senior posts in his government . Like Saddam , al - Majid was a Sunni Muslim who came from a poor family and had very little formal education . He worked as a motorcycle messenger and driver in the Iraqi Army until the Ba ' ath Party seized power in 1968 . His rise thereafter , aided by his cousin Saddam , was swift . He initially became an aide to Iraqi defence minister Hammadi Shihab in the early 1970s after joining the Ba ' ath party . He then became head of the government ' s Security Office , serving as an enforcer for the increasingly powerful Saddam . In 1979 Saddam seized power , pushing aside President Ahmed Hassan al - Bakr . At a videotaped assembly of Ba ' ath party officials in July 1979 , Saddam read out the names of political opponents , denouncing them as " traitors " , and ordering that they be removed one by one from the room ; many were later executed . Al - Majid could be seen in the background telling Saddam , " What you have done in the past was good . What you will do in the future is good . But there ' s this one small point . You have been too gentle , too merciful . " Al - Majid became one of Saddam ' s closest military advisors and head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service , Iraqi secret police known as the " Mukhabarat " . Following an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Saddam in 1983 in the town of Dujail , north of Baghdad , al - Majid directed the subsequent collective punishment operations in which scores of local men were killed , thousands more inhabitants were deported and the entire town was razed to the ground . Al - Anfal campaign . During the late stages of the Iran – Iraq War al - Majid was given the post of Secretary General of the Northern Bureau of the Ba ' ath Party , in which capacity he served from March 1987 to April 1989 . This effectively made him Saddam ' s proconsul in the north of the country , commanding all state agencies in the rebellious Kurdish - populated region of the country . He was known for his ruthlessness , ordering the indiscriminate use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas , sarin , tabun and VX against Kurdish targets during a genocidal campaign dubbed Al - Anfal or " The Spoils of War " . The first such attacks occurred as early as April 1987 and continued into 1988 , culminating in the notorious attack on Halabja in which over 5 , 000 people were killed . With Kurdish resistance continuing , al - Majid decided to cripple the rebellion by eradicating the civilian population of the Kurdish regions . His forces embarked on a systematic campaign of mass killings , property destruction and forced population transfer ( called " Arabization " ) in which thousands of Kurdish villages were razed and their inhabitants either killed or deported to the south of Iraq . He signed a decree in June 1987 stating that " Within their jurisdiction , the armed forces must kill any human being or animal present in these areas . " By 1988 , some 4 , 000 villages had been destroyed , an estimated 180 , 000 Kurds had been killed and some 1 . 5 million had been deported . The Kurds called him Chemical Ali ( " Ali Kimyawi " ) for his role in the campaign ; according to Iraqi Kurdish sources , Ali Hassan openly boasted of this nickname . Others dubbed him the " Butcher of Kurdistan " . Persian Gulf War and Iraq War . He was appointed Minister of Local Government following the war ' s end in 1988 , with responsibility for the repopulation of the Kurdish region with Arab settlers relocated from elsewhere in Iraq . Two years later , after the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 , he became the military governor of the occupied emirate . He instituted a violent regime under which Kuwait was systematically looted and purged of " disloyal elements " . In November 1990 , he was recalled to Baghdad and was appointed Interior Minister in March 1991 . Following the Iraqi defeat in the war , he was given the task of quelling the uprisings in the Shi ' ite south of Iraq as well as the Kurdish north . Both revolts were crushed with great brutality , with many thousands killed . He was subsequently given the post of Defense Minister , though he briefly fell from grace in 1995 when Saddam dismissed him after it was discovered that al - Majid was involved in illegally smuggling grain to Iran . In December 1998 , however , Saddam recalled him and appointed him commander of the southern region of Iraq , where the United States was increasingly carrying out air strikes in the southern no - fly zone . Al - Majid was re - appointed to this post in March 2003 , immediately before the start of the Iraq War . He based himself in the southern port city of Basra and in April 2003 he was mistakenly reported to have been killed there in a U . S . air strike . He survived the April 2003 attack but was arrested by American forces on 17 August 2003 . He had been listed as the fifth most - wanted man in Iraq , shown as the King of Spades in the deck of most - wanted Iraqi playing cards . In 2006 he was charged with genocide and crimes against humanity for his part in the Anfal campaign and was transferred to the Iraq Special Tribunal for trial . He received four death sentences for his role in killing Shia Muslims in 1991 and 1999 , the genocide of the Kurds in the 1980s , and ordering the gassing of Kurds at Halabja . Trial and execution . The trial began on 21 August 2006 , in acrimonious circumstances when al - Majid refused to enter a plea . He subsequently had a not guilty plea entered on his behalf by the court . He was unapologetic about his actions , telling the court that he had ordered the destruction of Kurdish villages because they were " full of Iranian agents " . At one hearing , he declared : " I am the one who gave orders to the army to demolish villages and relocate the villagers . The army was responsible to carry out those orders . I am not defending myself . I am not apologizing . I did not make a mistake . " During the trial , the court heard tape - recorded conversations between al - Majid and senior Ba ' ath party officials regarding the use of chemical weapons . Responding to a question about the success of the deportation campaign , Ali Hassan told his interlocutors : During the next few days of the trial , more recordings of al - Majid were heard in which he once again discussed the government ' s goals in dealing with the Iraqi Kurds . In the recordings , Ali Hassan calls the Iraqi Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani " wicked and a pimp , " and promises not to leave alive anyone who speaks the Kurdish language . Ali Hassan ' s defence claimed that he used such language as " psychological and propaganda " tools against the Kurds , to prevent them from fighting government forces . " All the words used by me , such as ' deport them ' or ' wipe them out , ' were only for psychological effect , " Ali Hassan said . On 24 June 2007 , the court returned a verdict of guilty on all counts . The presiding judge , Mohamed Oreibi al - Khalifa , told al - Majid : " You had all the civil and military authority for northern Iraq . You gave orders to the troops to kill Kurdish civilians and put them in severe conditions . You subjected them to wide and systematic attacks using chemical weapons and artillery . You led the killing of villagers . You . . . committed genocide . There are enough documents against you . " He received five death sentences for genocide , crimes against humanity ( specifically willful killing , forced disappearances and extermination ) , and war crimes ( intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population ) . He was also sentenced to multiple prison terms ranging from seven years to life for other crimes . As his sentences were upheld , under Iraqi law , sentence was to be carried out by hanging , subject to the convictions being upheld following an automatic appeal , and he was to be executed in the following 30 days along with two others – Sultan Hashim Ahmad al - Tai , military commander of the Anfal campaign ; and Hussein Rashid Mohammed , deputy general commander of the Iraqi armed force , assistant chief of staff for military operations , and former Republican Guard commander . However , the executions were postponed to 16 October , because of the arrival of the holy month of Ramadan . He was supposed to be executed 16 October 2007 , but the execution was delayed when Iraqi President Jalal Talabani expressed opposition to the sentences and refused to sign the execution orders . He then entered into a legal row with Nouri al - Maliki , and as a result the Americans refused to hand any of the condemned prisoners over until the issue was resolved . In February 2008 an anonymous informant stated that Ali Hassan al - Majid ' s execution was finally approved by Talabani and the two Vice - Presidents ; this was the final hurdle in the way of the execution . On 2 December 2008 , al - Majid was once again sentenced to death , but this time for playing a role in killing between 20 , 000 and 100 , 000 Shi ' ite Muslims during the revolt in southern Iraq that followed the 1991 Persian Gulf War . < ref name = " CNN 2 / 12 / 08 " > < / ref > On 2 March 2009 , al - Majid was sentenced to death for the third time , this for the assassination of Grand - Ayatollah Mohammad al - Sadr in 1999 . The Iraqi Cabinet put pressure on the Presidential council on 17 March 2009 for Al - Majid ' s execution . The situation was similar on 17 January 2010 prior to 9 am ( GMT ) ; a fourth death penalty was issued against him in response to his acts of genocide against Kurds in the 1980s . He was also convicted of killing Shia Muslims in 1991 and 1999 . Alongside him in the trial was former defense minister Sultan Hashem , who was also found guilty by The Iraqi High Tribunal for the Halabja attack and sentenced to 15 years ' imprisonment . Al - Majid was executed by hanging on 25 January 2010 . He was buried in Saddam ' s family cemetery in al - Awja the next day ; near Saddam ' s sons , half - brother and the former vice president , but outside the mosque housing the marble tomb of Saddam himself . While he was sentenced to death on four separate occasions , the original 2007 verdict sentenced him to five death sentences , and so the combined tally of death sentences handed out was eight . Amnesty International ' s Middle East and North Africa Director Malcolm Smart later criticized the execution as " only the latest of a mounting number of executions , some of whom did not receive fair trials , in gross violation of human rights . . . "