Word: hashem
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...night of Sept. 10, general Sultan Hashem Ahmed was prepared to die. He had written his will and left instructions about where his body should be buried. All that remained was to wait for his appointment with the hangman. At the gallows, there was extra security to thwart any rescue attempt, a senior Iraqi official tells Time. After all, Hashem was no ordinary criminal. Saddam Hussein's last Defense Minister had been condemned to death by an Iraqi court for his role in the slaughter of thousands of Kurds. Like his former boss before him, Hashem was held in Camp...
...execution had never been announced, so its cancellation went unnoticed by the wider world. But Iraqi officials have told Time the reason Hashem never made it to the gallows that night: his U.S. military captors refused to hand him over. According to an adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Americans' explanation was that key Iraqi leaders did not want the execution carried out. President Jalal Talabani, for instance, was opposed to the death sentence on principle. But Iraqi officials accused the U.S. of shielding Hashem for an entirely different reason: the general had been a U.S. collaborator...
...Hashem's motivation may have been to save the lives of his own troops, who stood little chance against U.S. military might. And it was not his first contact with the Americans. In 1991 he negotiated a cease-fire with General Norman Schwarzkopf at the end of the first Gulf War. (Schwarzkopf would later say he was "suckered" by Hashem, who persuaded him to permit Iraq the use of helicopters later deployed by Saddam to kill thousands of rebellious Shi'ites.) Hashem rose to chief of staff of the Iraqi army and then Defense Minister. He remained popular with...
...Hashem had been sentenced to death for directing the brutal Anfal Campaign in the late 1980s in which thousands of Kurds were massacred by the regime, many in the notorious chemical-weapons attack on civilians at Halabjah. The sentence was upheld by an appeals court, but several Iraqi politicians, including President Jalal Talibani have spoken out against hanging Hashem. Although Talabani has consistently opposed the death penalty on principle - even in the case of Saddam Hussein - other politicians may be concerned that the execution of a respected Sunni soldier could be disruptive to national reconciliation in an Iraq deeply divided...
...senior Iraqi official insisted to TIME that Hashem's execution will proceed in coming weeks, following the end of the Ramadan fast and the Eid holiday on Saturday. "It will happen," he said, contending that the Iraqi High Tribunal that tried Hashem is an independent special court that does not require a presidential signature to carry out its orders. If Hashem is hanged, it will likely be along with two other Ba'athists convicted as war criminals, notably Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical...