This morning’s NY Times reports yet another Saddam-era villain is going to meet his maker. It's encouraging to see that some countries still believe in executing war criminals unlike - well, never mind.

BAGHDAD, Oct. 17 — The man known as Chemical Ali for ordering poison gas attacks against the Kurds in the 1980s has been flown by helicopter from a United States base to a site near a prison gallows in Baghdad, an Iraqi police official said Wednesday, suggesting that his execution was imminent.

The prisoner, Ali Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of Saddam Hussein, was sentenced on June 24 to death for his role in the Anfal* — or “spoils of war” — campaign that killed as many as 180,000 Kurds.

This Anfal campaign was of course enabled by the sale of dual use chemicals to Saddam by a good friend of his.

An appeals court upheld Mr. Majid’s sentence on Sept. 4, clearing the way for his execution within 30 days, as required under Iraqi law.

The execution was delayed, however, in a legal dispute over whether Mr. Majid and two other top officials convicted for their roles in the Kurdish campaign should be killed during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ended last week. The feast celebrating the end of Ramadan, Id al-Fitr, wound up on Sunday for Sunnis and on Monday for Shiites.

Sultan Hashim Ahmed was moved to the site near the gallows along with Mr. Majid, said the police official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the transfers. Mr. Ahmed, also a relative of Mr. Hussein, commanded attacks on the Kurds in 1988 and served as defense minister during the American invasion in 2003.

Good-bye, good riddance, and good luck. May Allah have more mercy than you showed during your lives.

* - In March 1987, Saddam Hussein's cousin from his hometown of Tikrit, Ali Hassan al-Majid, was appointed secretary-general of the Ba'ath Party's Northern Region, which included Iraqi Kurdistan. Under al-Majid, control of policies against the Kurdish insurgents passed from the Iraqi Army to the Ba'ath Party itself. This was the prelude to the intended "final solution" to the Kurdish problem undertaken within months of al-Majid's arrival in his post. It would be known as "al-Anfal" ("The Spoils"), in a reference to the eighth sura of the Qur'an.

Anfal, officially conducted between February 23 and September 6, 1988, would have eight stages altogether, seven of them targeting areas controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. The Kurdish Democratic Party-controlled areas in the northwest of Iraqi Kurdistan, which the regime regarded as a lesser threat, were the target of the Final Anfal operation in late August and early September, 1988. For these assaults, the Iraqis mustered up to 200,000 soldiers with air support -- matched against Kurdish guerrilla forces that numbered no more than a few thousand.