Published in Maclean's Magazine, August 25, 2003 (edition date: September 2) First, he was dead. Then alive, then dead again. Finally, last week, "Captured Alive" was stamped on the file of Gen. Ali Hassan al Majid, Saddam Hussein's ruthless right hand man and arguably the most stubborn survivor, apart from Saddam, in America's war on Iraq. At the Pentagon and the White House, spokesmen kept their accounts of the capture of the man known as "Chemical Ali" short and sweet. That's hardly surprising, considering the trail of death left in the fugitive's wake--much of it caused by poorly aimed or faulty American smart-bombs. The irony about al Majid is that the same U.S. officials who've suggested he be tried for war crimes are themselves accused of causing civilian deaths in a bungled air attack on his hideout in Basra on April 5th. The former boss of Saddam's military apparatus, Chemical Ali's policies in the 1980's led to the deaths or disappearance of up to 100,000 Kurds, including the gas attack on the village of Halabja, in March 1988, that killed 5,000 and earned al Majid his sinister nickname. If U.S. interrogators can break him, there's little about Saddam's weapons programs that Chemical Ali can't tell them. That's no consolation for the Hamoodis, one of the most respected families in Basra, who number among them several of the city's leading physicians. Two Hamoodi sons live in Manchester, England, as British citizens. Yet at 5:30 a.m. on the morning of April 5th, the family's fate collided with that of al Majid in one deadly, explosive instant. A 500-pound laser-guided bomb, dropped by an American F-16, plowed into the house the Hamoodis were using for shelter against the war. The target had been the compound next door. A British commando, hiding nearby, had spotted al Majid and his bodyguards arriving hours before. In the first of two attacks, a pair of F-16's completely missed the targeted building. One bomb almost killed the hapless English spotter on the ground, while the other malfunctioned and struck the Hamoodis' home. Later, two more bombs were dropped, this time on the mark. In the choking dust and rubble, the Hamoodis' patriarch, 72-year-old Abid Hassan, helped by his young grandsons, struggled to free the other members of the family. But for his wife and three of their children--and seven grandchildren--it was too late. At least five other civilians in the vicinity died too. "Was it necessary to kill 20 people in our street for the sake of one bastard?" Mr. Hamoodi asked when approached by a BBC reporter a few days after the attack. When Maclean's visited the scene on April 15th, he was still there, helping his nephews salvage belongings from the ruins. "It shouldn't have happened," he said, claiming that any element of surprise was lost. "Ten minutes went by before the second attack. We saw people climb over the wall and run away. They escaped." Despite his account, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stated that Chemical Ali "had probably been killed" in the attack. The British were firmer. "Definitely he's dead," they boasted. In a Pentagon briefing, joint chiefs chairman Gen. Richard Myers showed off video of the attack, characterizing it as a success, while allowing: "We dropped two weapons on this target but the first time missed, as you can see by the black spot." The officer who directed the attacks, U.S. Marines Maj. Bryant Sewall, was certain of success when he visited the site. "I'm very proud and pleased," he told journalists, "that we were able to get somebody that was very viscious, and killed more people than probably we'll ever know. But any time that you have any--even one--civilian death as a result of that, it's something that we have to deal with and we have to rationalize and hope to avoid in the future." Soon, however, came reported sightings of Chemical Ali in Baghdad. In June, Gen. Myers allowed that al Majid might still be alive. While last week's capture may cause a few red faces around the Pentagon, the official approach of saying as little as possible about the failed air raid, and the deaths it caused, will likely pay off. According to Claudio Cordone, Director of International Law for Amnesty International, it would be difficult for any lawyer acting for the Hamoodis to prove the attack falls within the three possible grounds for action: targeting civilians intentionally, acting disproportionately or attacking with absolute carelessness. "The best answer would be an investigation carried out by the United States," says Cordone, "but it's unlikely in a case like this that the authorities would elect to do so." Dr. Firas Abbass, a close friend of the Hamoodis and head surgeon at Basra's Children's Hospital, would not be surprised by that outcome. "Between Saddam and the Americans," he said of the attack, "there is nothing to choose. We are powerless, we are victims." |