10. His Cousin "Chemical Ali" Gassed Hundreds Of Thousands Of Kurds... As Part Of Hussein's Iraqi Genocide
Hussein committed acts of genocide in Iraq - particularly against the ethnic Kurdish rebels in the north of the country and the Shia dissidents in the South - and he used his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid to carry many of these atrocities out. Dubbed "Chemical Ali", al-Majid was Defence Minister, Interior Minister, military commander and chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service - and he carried out the mass deportations and killings of many ethnic groups. Using chemical weapons - including mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX - al-Majid launched the notorious Al-Anfal campaign (or "The Spoils of War") against Kurds during the late-1980s, killing more than 5,000. He killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds in all, with some 1.5million more deported. Al-Anfal carried out the orders of Hussein and was himself charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide after being captured following the 2003 invasion of Iraq - and he was eventually hanged on January 25, 2010.
NUFC editor for WhatCulture.com/NUFC. History graduate (University of Edinburgh) and NCTJ-trained journalist. I love sports, hopelessly following Newcastle United and Newcastle Falcons. My pastimes include watching and attending sports matches religiously, reading spy books and sampling ales.
