California Conservative

I can’t think of a better way of reinforcing the message that Saddam’s regime thugs won’t be coddled than with a hanging. That’s the verdict in the trial of Chemical Ali:

Saddam Hussein’s cousin, widely known as “Chemical Ali,” was sentenced on Sunday to hang for masterminding a genocidal military campaign that used poison gas against Iraq’s Kurds in the 1980s. Ali Hassan al-Majeed, looking frail and wearing traditional Arab robes, stood silently as the judge read the verdict. As he was escorted from the Baghdad courtroom, he said: “Thanks be to God.”

“This is judgment day for the aggressors against the Kurdish people,” said Namiq Horamy, as he handed out sweets to colleagues in Kurdistan’s Ministry of Martyrs, which looks after victims of the campaign.

Hopefully we’ll be treated to another hanging soon. While I don’t automatically accept the application of the death penalty, I definitely do in this instance. In fact, I’d say that the death penalty is the only just punishment for terrorists as evil as Saddam and Chemical Ali.

Kurds have long sought justice for the so-called Anfal or “Spoils of War” campaign that has left lasting scars on their mountainous region. Prosecutors say up to 180,000 people were killed in the seven-month “scorched-earth” operation in 1988.

Ali’s hanging will bring alot of closure to the tortured Kurds. For that matter, it should bring closure to the Shia south by Basra, too. That’s what I’d call justice. This quote proves that Ali’s hanging will bring alot of closure to the Kurds:

“As soon as I heard Ali Hassan al-Majeed and Sultan Hashim had received the death sentence I was ecstatic and I began to scream. But the bigger joy would be to see Majeed executed in Kurdistan,” said Shaheen Mahmoud, a Kurdish civil servant, in the northern city of Sulaimaniya.

Technorati Tags: Saddam, Chemical Ali, WMDs, Justice, Kurds, Shiites

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 24th, 2007 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Iraq, Judiciary, Law, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.