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Excerpt - BAGHDAD, June 24 — 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. 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. Unlike his cousin Saddam Hussein, whose shouted defiance nearly drowned out...

via translation - ALARM - Genocide Kurdish: death penalty by hanging for “Ali the chemical one” BAGHDAD - “Ali the Chemical one”, cousin of Saddam Hussein, was condemned Sunday to the death penalty by hanging by the High Iraqi penal court for the genocide having cost the life some 182.000 Kurds in 1988.

Excerpt - BAGHDAD (AFP) - The Iraqi High Tribunal is set to give its verdict on Sunday on six former aides of Saddam Hussein accused of slaughtering 182,000 Kurdish villagers during a 1988 military campaign in northern Iraq. Ahead of the judgement, the defence team appealed to United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon to stop the trial which it said was marred by "errors." The most prominent defendant is Ali Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of Saddam who is widely known as "Chemical Ali" for allegedly ordering the killing of tens of thousands of Kurdish villagers with chemical gas strikes. He faces...

Excerpt - BAGHDAD, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Two of Saddam Hussein's aides were hanged before dawn on Monday, the Iraqi government said, admitting that the head of his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti was also ripped from his body during the execution. On the defensive after international uproar over sectarian taunts during the illicitly filmed hanging of the ousted president two weeks ago, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh insisted there was "no violation of procedure" during the executions of Barzan and former judge Awad Hamed al-Bander. But defence lawyers and politicians from Saddam's once dominant Sunni Arab minority expressed fury at the...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Saddam Hussein's half brother and the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court were both hanged before dawn Monday, Prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon said, two weeks and two days after the former Iraqi dictator was executed in a chaotic scene that has drawn worldwide criticism.

Excerpt - BAGHDAD, Jan. 8 — The courtroom he dominated for 15 months seemed much smaller on Monday without him there to mock the judges and assert his menacing place in history. But the thick, high-register voice of Saddam Hussein was unmistakable. In audio recordings made years ago and played 10 days after his hanging, Mr. Hussein was heard justifying the use of chemical weapons against the Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s, predicting they would kill “thousands” and saying he alone among Iraq’s leaders had the authority to order chemical attacks. In the history of prosecutions against some of...

The execution of the two co-defendants of Saddam Hussein deferred to Sunday BAGHDAD - the execution envisaged Thursday of the two co-defendants of Saddam Hussein, his half-brother Barzan Al-Tikriti, former chief of the Iraqi secret service and the former president of the revolutionary tribunal Awad Al-Bandar, was deferred to Sunday, according to a close relation of Iraqi the Prime Minister. "It is deferred to Sunday", indicated to AFP Baha Al-Araji, appointed Shiite close to the Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. "Because of the international pressures and within the Arab world, the execution of Barzan Al-Tikriti and Awad Al-Bandar were deferred...

BAGHDAD, Dec 30 (KUNA) -- The ousted dictator Saddam Hussein as executed early on Saturday in the Baghdad northern suburban district of Al-Kathmiah, a member of the legislative authority said. Sami Al-Askari said in a statement that Saddam was hanged in a building that used to be occupied by the intelligence authority of the toppled Baath regime. Muwaffak Al-Rabiee, the national security advisor, said Saddam appeared subdued and panicked when he was dragged to the gallows, and that he made no will ahead of the execution. With the announcement of the execution many Iraqis opened fire into the air...

Since it now seems very imminent, I decided that it was an appropriate time to start this up. Links to information and pictures (if we get them) can be posted here.

BAGHDAD, Dec. 8 — One of the most coveted jobs in Iraq does not yet exist: the executioner for Saddam Hussein. The death sentence against Mr. Hussein is still under review by an appeals court, but hundreds of people have already started lobbying the prime minister’s office for the position. They have sent messages through cabinet officials and their assistants, and by way of government guards and clerical workers. One candidate, an Iraqi Shiite living in London whose brother was killed by Mr. Hussein, telephoned an aide to the prime minister to say he was prepared to drop everything and...

AMMAN - Saddam Hussein wrote to the judge in the ethnic Kurdish genocide trial to tell him he would no longer attend court sessions to protest against being repeatedly silenced from speaking, his chief lawyer said on Tuesday. In the letter which was handed to a defense team lawyer who saw him on Monday, the former Iraqi leader said he and his defense team had been denied "clarifying the truth" over his role in a military campaign that killed up to 180,000 people. Saddam, who is awaiting an appeal against a death sentence from a separate case for the killing...

CAIRO, Egypt — Egypt's president came out strongly against hanging Saddam Hussein, saying in remarks published Thursday that it could make Iraq explode into more violence. The statement from President Hosni Mubarak of Eygpt broke an uneasy silence among Arab leaders over Sunday's verdict by an Iraqi court, which convicted Saddam for the killings of some 150 Shiite Muslims after an assassination attempt against him in 1982. Mubarak, a regional heavyweight and a top U.S. ally, appeared to speak for many in the region who are uneasy about seeing a former Arab president tried and sentenced — no matter how...

ALARM - Resumption of the lawsuit of Saddam shown for genocide against the Kurds BAGHDAD - former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein returned in front of his judges Tuesday in the lawsuit for "genocide" against the Kurds, two days after his death sentence for the massacre of villager Shiites in the years 1980.

Saddam Hussein tells the only woman in his life that he is ready to meet his hangman – provided he is allowed to finish writing his novel. "I will go to the gallows with dignity knowing I will die a martyr," he told his lawyer, Bushra Khalil, the only woman on his defense team. "The legacy I will leave the world is my new epic work that will assure my place in literature." In an exclusive interview at the closing stages of Hussein's trial, Khalil, 44, revealed how she built up a unique relationship with the former dictator. She described...

Iraq urges calm ahead of Saddam verdict By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer 38 minutes ago SNIP BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's prime minister on Saturday urged his countrymen to accept the impending verdict against Saddam Hussein without violence, then in the next breath declared the former dictator must get "what he deserves" with the decision that could send him to the gallows.

A defiant Saddam Hussein shrugged off a possible death sentence, saying he would die without fear and the US occupiers of his country would leave humiliated like they did in Vietnam, his lawyers said on Saturday. They said a jovial and highly spirited Saddam chatted with them for more than three hours about the violence in Iraq and mounting US losses just hours before an expected death sentence on Sunday in his trial for crimes against humanity.

Saddam Hussein is to be denied his final wish of an "honourable" death by military firing squad after court officials ruled he should face the gallows as a common criminal if found guilty. The former Iraqi dictator, who is expected to be given the death sentence today when a verdict is delivered in his first war crimes trial, has been demanding execution by the gun rather than the rope, on the basis that he was head of the country's armed forces. But the Iraqi war crimes court in Baghdad has dismissed his request, noting that Saddam failed the entry exam...

DEPOSED Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's sentence will be automatically reviewed by an appeals panel if he is convicted tomorrow of war crimes and sentenced to death or life imprisonment. If these judges find grounds to question the judgment, Saddam will face another trial. If not, the sentence imposed this weekend by the Iraqi High Tribunal will stand and be carried out within 30 days. Saddam and his seven co-defendants were put on trial for the killing of 148 Shi'ite civilians from the town of Dujail, where the then president escaped an assassination attempt in 1982. Under the statutes establishing the...

The lawyers of Saddam will be present at the verdict Sunday AMMAN - the lawyers of Saddam Hussein will be present Sunday at the High penal court in Baghdad to attend the verdict of the first lawsuit of the deposed Iraqi president, indicated to Friday to AFP the foreman of defense, Khalil Al-Doulaïmi. With the question of knowing if the team would go to the statement of the verdict, waited Sunday, it answered: "I will go to Baghdad in company of all the members of the team of defense and among them Ramsey Clark, a former American minister for...

The court trying Saddam Hussein for genocide has heard testimony from Kurdish witnesses describing alleged chemical attacks on their villages. Villagers spoke of their memories of Operation Anfal, a crackdown against Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s. They described a smell "like rotten apples" minutes after the bombings, comparing them to "Doomsday". Testimony came after the ousted Iraqi president's defence stormed out, saying the trial could not be fair. Chief defence lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi walked out of court after requests made in an apparent end to the boycott of the genocide trial were turned down. After a heated exchange,...