Saddam Hussein’s cousin Ali Hasan al-Majid, better known to us as Chemical Ali, and two other Saddam regime members have been sentenced to death.

Saddam Hussein’s cousin, known as “Chemical Ali,” and two other regime officials were sentenced yesterday to hang for slaughtering up to 180,000 Kurdish men, women and children with chemical weapons, artillery barrages and mass executions two decades ago.

Two other defendants were sentenced to life in prison for their roles in the 1987-88 crackdown, known as “Operation Anfal.” A sixth defendant was acquitted for lack of evidence. Death sentences are automatically appealed.

The most notorious defendant was Saddam’s cousin, Ali Hasan al-Majid, who gained his nickname for ordering the use of mustard gas and nerve agents against the Kurds in response to their collaboration with the Iranians during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.

Witnesses testified that Iraqi government forces indiscriminately attacked women and children, burned crops, killed livestock and rounded up civilians into detention camps in a campaign to exterminate the restive Kurdish minority.

The defendants insisted that they were defending the nation against Kurdish guerrillas who had sided with Iran during the bloody eight-year war.

Al-Majid, once among the most powerful and feared men in Iraq, trembled in silence as Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa read the verdict against him and imposed five death sentences for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“You had all the civil and military authority for northern Iraq,” Judge al-Khalifa said. “You gave the orders to the troops to kill Kurdish civilians and put them in severe conditions. You subjected them to wide and systematic attacks using chemical weapons and artillery. You led the killing of Iraqi villagers. You restricted them in their areas, burned their orchards, killed their animals. You committed genocide.”

“Thanks be to God,” Al-Majid said as he was led from the courtroom.

While they deserve death for the death they caused, it does seem to me the Iraqis could find a more humane way to do it than hanging. It seems so barbarous, and the observers seem irreverent in the taking of a life—even a life that should be taken.

I pray this doesn’t hit the internet the way some of the others have.