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Saddam's henchmen still awaiting trip to gallows

Iraq marks the first anniversary of Saddam Hussein's execution today with some of his most notorious aides still managing to avoid the gallows despite being sentenced to death.

On June 24 the judiciary sentenced "Chemical Ali," one of Saddam's most feared henchmen, to death in a bid to sweep away yet another piece of the executed Iraqi dictator's ruthless regime.

Two other pillars of the regime were also sentenced to hang with him, former defense minister Sultan Hashim al-Tai and Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, the former armed forces deputy chief of operations.

All three were convicted of playing key roles in the slaughter of tens of thousands of ethnic Kurds in 1988.

But the US military which is holding the three condemned men says they will be handed over for execution only after a legal row between some of Iraq's highest ranking officials is resolved.

The government has been split over the legal and procedural requirements for carrying out the sentences handed down by the Iraqi High Tribunal, the court set up to try former officials of the Saddam regime.

The supreme court upheld the sentences in September, and under Iraqi law all three should have been executed by the end of the day on Oct. 4.

But Iraq decided to postpone the hangings until after the holy Muslim month of Ramadan which ended on Oct. 15, because of the outcry that followed Saddam's hanging during another Muslim holiday last year.

The executions have been further delayed because two members of the presidential council -- President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni -- have refused to sign the execution orders.

Visiting US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte told reporters in Baghdad this month that the men would remain in US custody until the legal problems are resolved.

Ali Hassan al-Majid acquired the nickname "Chemical Ali" for ordering poison gas attacks against Kurds in a scorched-earth campaign of bombings and mass deportations that left an estimated 182,000 people dead.

Majid, 66, was a cousin of Saddam and served as his enforcer against Iraq's Shiites and Kurds.

Others in the former president's inner circle of family members and many of his cronies -- mostly Sunni Arabs from the Tikrit region of northern Iraq -- have been hunted down.
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