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Man on the run: how Chemical Ali escaped from Baghdad
By: Ralph Hassall (Bulletin Staff)
Published date: 24/6/2003
Presidential adviser and former Southern Regional Commander Ali Hassan Al-Majjid, otherwise known as Chemical Ali, was not killed during British strikes in Basrah on April 7.
On the night of April 9, in the confusion of fighting at the airport and the US Army advance on Baghdad from the southeast of the city, the Baghdad Nursing Home in Medical City was visited by three well-known men, two of whom are on the US Army's 55 "most wanted list".
"I was working, doing my job giving therapy to the patients and wounded people when I was called by the manager who said he needed me for a very important issue," said Abu Yousif, a doctor at the nursing home."I went down and saw Soultan Hassan, the minister of defence, lying down and Ali Hassan Al-Majjid standing beside him surrounded by three special guards and a new doctor whose name I don't know. That doctor told me that the minister had had a stroke and they needed me to camouflage them as wounded people," Abu Yousif said.
The guards were carrying weapons, and Abu Yousif was compelled to dress the two men with bandages and blood so that they could make their escape."I had no other choice than to follow orders, the manager was looking at me and telling me by his eyes to 'just do it,'" Abu Yousif said. "I couldn't do anything else, just dress them up as wounded people and color them with real blood, we were all afraid of them."
Abu Yousif's family is from Halabja, where Majjid earned the sobriquet of Chemical Ali after his massacre of the Kurds there in 1988."I had a lot of relatives who died there when it was bombed with chemical weapons. I had the feelings of anger and hate knowing that I was serving the man who destroyed my village, killing all the people there. I didn't want to do it but I didn't have the choice," Abu Yousif said.
A nurse at the hospital corroborated Abu Yousif's story. "On the night of the ninth of April, I was on duty in the ward, mostly offering help to any department that needed any help," the nurse said. "
I was told that Ali Hassan Al-Majjid was in the lobby near the information unit, so I went down to see him and there he was standing with a lot of his guards."
When she asked her colleagues why he was there she was told of Sultan Hashem's stroke and that Majjid's driver was severely injured.
"Yes, I was sure about his identity, I've seen him many times before visiting relatives in our hospital," the nurse said.
Sabouri had apparently been hit by a tank round during the fighting on the outskirts of Baghdad.
"Hashem had been given the relevant drugs for his stroke but was awake and hysterical, screaming that the battle had been lost," said an anaesthetist at the hospital. "Sabouri had been given a major surgery, and had a colostomy bag with him and was sitting silently, while Chemical Ali was brandishing his gun shouting, 'we will get reinforcements from the North'. Then they were dressed up as wounded people and taken away in an ambulance"
Though American troops were already in the capital, a quiet corridor from the hospital complex to the northwest existed and it is assumed that the men made their escape through this route.
"I don't think Sabouri can have survived, he needed intensive care and therapy," said the anaesthetist. "He couldn't have gone to a hospital in the north, they would have recognized him and he would have been killed."
Coalition forces are certainly aware that Majjid was not killed in Basra. Men detained during recent US Army raids on houses near Balad said interrogators asked them whether they had seen "Ali Chemical."
Other residents said Majjid was in Balad on April 6.
"We shot at him," said Balad resident Easa Habib. "He had at that time with him fedayeen from Syria and Algeria."
Published date: 24/6/2003
Author: Ralph Hassall (Bulletin Staff)
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