'Chemical Ali' sentenced in Kurd attack

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BAGHDAD, Jan. 17 (UPI) -- Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, was sentenced Sunday to hang for a 1988 gas attack against Kurds in Halabja, Iraqi officials said.

Majid was sentenced by the Iraqi High Tribunal for ordering jets to fly over Halabja and spray mustard gas and nerve agents, KUNA, the Kuwaiti news service reported.

An estimated 5,000 people, most of them women and children, died in the attack.

The death sentence was the fourth for Majid, a strongman in Saddam Hussein's regime who previously was convicted of killing Shiite Muslims and for his role in a campaign of genocide against the Kurds.

Also sentenced Sunday for the Halabja attack was former Iraqi Defense Minister Sultan Hashem, who received 15 years in prison; former intelligence chief Sabir Al-Douri, who was sentenced to 15 years and former northern intelligence chief Farhan Al-Jabouri, who was sentenced to 10 years, the BBC reported.

Majid was arrested in August 2003, five months after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.