Saddam Hussein's henchman 'Chemical Ali' executed

A government spokesman in Baghdad said the sentence had been carried out on Monday.

He was expected to have been hanged, like Saddam.

He received his fourth death sentence last week for his most famous crime when he ordered a gas attack on northern Iraq's Kurdish population.

He was convicted of ordering the single biggest atrocity of Saddam's rule, the gassing of 5,600 people in the town of Halabja.

The attack in 1988 is believed to be the worst use of poison gas against civilians in history.

Majid had already received three death sentences - one for genocide, for directing the campaign against the Kurds; one for a massacre of Shia civilians in southern Iraq in 1991; and one for the killing of more Shia in Baghdad and Najaf in 1999.

Majid was Saddam's cousin and was at his side from his coming to power in 1979 to the end. In a celebrated film of Saddam haranguing officials after becoming president and then looking on as those he names are taken away to be killed, Majid is seen standing at his shoulder.

At one point, he says: "What you have done in the past was good. What you will do in the future is good. But there's this one small point. You have been too gentle, too merciful."

He was appointed governor of northern Iraq in 1987, towards the end of the war with Iran. He set about the destruction of the Kurds, who had used the conflict to press for autonomy.

He did so at a cost of an estimated 100,000 civilian deaths. Gas attacks grew in intensity, culminating in the bombing of Halabja on March 16, 1988, with shells containing mustard gas and the nerve agents Tabun, Sarin and VX.

Majid was thought to have been killed by US forces in Basra soon after the 2003 invasion of Iraq but it later emerged he had escaped.