'Chemical Ali' buried to adulation in hometown

Hundreds of Kurds took to the streets of the Iraqi town of Halabja on Tuesday to celebrate the execution of 'Chemical Ali', hanged for the gassing of some 5,000 of its residents in 1988."The execution is just and it fills me with a joy that I cannot describe," said Kulala Mohammed, 40, who lost two brothers in the attacks."I went to pray at the grave of my brothers and to tell them: 'You can now rest in peace. Your enemy has gone forever and Halabja can be reborn,'" he told AFP.

Saddam Hussein's notorious henchman "Chemical Ali" was executed on Monday, an Iraqi government spokesman said, a sentence carried out around a week after he received a fourth death sentence."The condemned Ali Hassan al-Majid has been executed by hanging until death today," said spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh in a statement.

Hundreds of Iraqis gathered at the tomb of former dictator Saddam Hussein on Friday to commemorate the anniversary of his execution in 2006.Throughout the day, they poured into the mausoleum in Saddam's hometown of Awja where the ex-president and his two sons, Uday and Qusay, are buried.Saddam was actually hanged on December 30, 2006, which marked that year the first day of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. This year the festival began on Friday, according to the Islamic calendar.

PARIS — Three Kurdish women, including one of the founders of a militant group battling Turkish troops since 1984, were “executed” at a Kurdish centre in Paris, the interior minister said Thursday. The news prompted angry crowds of Kurds to flood into the area. Turkey’s Anadolu news agency identified one of the victims as Sakine Cansiz, a founding member of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. Turkey and its Western allies, including the United States and the European Union, consider the group a terrorist organization.

Iraqi authorities uncovered a mass grave with 900 corpses near the central city of Diwaniyah on Wednesday, believed to be Kurds killed during the rule of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, an official said.The corpses were found in the Shanafiya region, 70 kilometres (45 miles) west of Diwaniyah."The corpses were buried in a trench. There were 900 bodies," said Dakhil Saihoud, provincial head of the Justice and Accountability Commission which investigates issues related to Saddam's regime.

A US defense contractor accused of helping torture prisoners at Iraq's infamous Abu Ghraib prison has paid former detainees more than $5 million to settle a lawsuit, according to regulatory filings obtained by AFP on Wednesday.

Iraq's High Criminal Court on Thursday sentenced to death three Saddam Hussein-era spies who assassinated the father of a sitting Iraqi lawmaker in Beirut in April 1994."The court sentences to death Hadi Hassuni, Abdul Hassan al-Majid and Farukh Hijazi, who were agents of the intelligence services," tribunal spokesman Mohammed Abdul Saheb told AFP.Two other men, military intelligence chief Saber Duri and Saddam's secretary Abdul Hamid Mahmoud, were sentenced to life imprisonment at the conclusion of the trial, which began in October 2009.

Thousands of Iraqis held rallies in the mainly Shiite cities of Basra, Karbala and Najaf on Thursday in support of a decision to bar election candidates linked to executed dictator Saddam Hussein.Election organisers have banned from the March 7 vote more than 500 candidates said to be members of Saddam's outlawed Baath party or former employees of his once deadly military and intelligence network.