**Ali Hassan al-Majid, a former Iraqi official known as Chemical Ali, has been sentenced to death for ordering the gassing of Kurds.**It is the fourth time that Majid, an enforcer in Saddam Hussein’s regime, has been sentenced to death.
He has also been convicted of the 1999 killings of Shia Muslims in Baghdad and for a campaign of genocide against the Kurds.
His latest sentence is for a gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988.
It is believed that 5,000 people were killed in the attack, most of them women and children.
Majid was a cousin of Saddam Hussein, who earned his nickname after his use of poison gas.
The Al-Iraqiya channel said Majid would be killed by hanging.
Ethnic campaign
The Iraqi High Tribunal also sentenced former defence minister Sultan Hashem to 15 years in prison for the attack, a court official said, quoted by Reuters.
Majid was captured in August 2003, five months after US forces invaded Iraq.
He was sentenced to hang in June 2007 for his role in a military campaign against ethnic Kurds, codenamed Anfal, that lasted from February to August of 1988.
In December 2008 he also received a death sentence for his role in crushing a Shia revolt after the 1991 Gulf War.
In March 2009 he was sentenced to death, along with others, for the 1999 killings of Shia Muslims in Baghdad.