Iraq premier criticizes delay in executions
Maliki says the presidential council has no authority to hold up the sentence of two men convicted of genocide.
BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's office lashed out Friday at the Iraqi presidential council for refusing to approve the executions of two of the three men sentenced to hang for the genocidal campaign against Iraq's ethnic Kurdish minority during Saddam Hussein's rule.
The public dispute highlighted the persistent rancor between Iraq's major ethnic and religious factions, which continues to paralyze the highest levels of government nearly five years after Hussein's fall.
Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, has pressed for speedy executions for the three, who were convicted in June of genocide and other crimes for their roles in a late-1980s military crackdown known as the Anfal, or "spoils of war," campaign, which killed as many as 180,000 Kurds.
Earlier Friday, senior government aides said the three-member presidency council, which consists of President Jalal Talabani and two vice presidents, had signed off on the execution of Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan Majid, who became known as "Chemical Ali" for ordering the use of poison gas against villages said to be harboring Kurdish guerrillas. The council's decision was the last legal obstacle to carrying out the sentence, which must be done within 30 days.
But an aide said Vice President Tariq Hashimi, who, like the defendants, is a Sunni Arab, would not endorse the executions of the two military leaders who helped carry out the deadly attacks: Sultan Hashim Ahmad Jabburi Tai, a former defense minister, and Hussein Rashid Mohammed, the former deputy head of army operations.
Execution orders require the signatures of all three members of the presidency council under Iraqi law. Talabani, a Kurd who opposes the death penalty on principle, has given Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi, a Shiite, authority to sign on his behalf.
Many Sunnis regard Tai and Mohammed as military professionals who were only following orders, and Hashimi has argued that their lives should be spared.
Sensing an opportunity to encourage reconciliation, Talabani has also urged clemency for Tai, who is said to have had contact with the Iraqi opposition before the war and surrendered voluntarily to U.S. forces in 2003.
Iraq's two main Shiite parties, however, are opposed to commuting Tai's sentence because of his role in the brutal suppression of a 1991 Shiite uprising at the end of the Persian Gulf War.
