Saddam's chief executioner

Whenever Saddam Hussein finds himself in a crisis, there is usually one man he turns to - General Ali Hassan al-Majid. Yesterday there were reports that Gen Majid, Saddam's cousin and close aide, had brutally suppressed an uprising in Basra.

There were also suggestions that fighting had broken out in the city between pro-Saddam factions after Gen Majid ordered the execution of a Shia Ba'ath party leader.

While these reports are difficult to verify, there is little doubt that Gen Majid is once again performing his favourite role - that of Saddam's chief executioner. Gen Majid has long been a member of Saddam's inner circle, and is one of the few people the Iraqi president still trusts.

Shortly before war broke out, Saddam gave the general the task of defending southern Iraq from invading coalition forces. It was a tough assignment.

So far he appears to have made considerable impact, inflicting casualties on American and British forces as they struggle towards Baghdad.

The degree of his military success seems to have surprised British officers. But few people inside Iraq would have made the same apparent mistake of underestimating Gen Majid.

When Saddam Hussein became president in 1979, Gen Majid was already a fanatical Saddam loyalist. He first demonstrated his flair for brutality as head of Iraq's secret police, the mukhabarat.

But it was in the late 80s that Gen Majid consolidated his reputation when Saddam sent him to northern Iraq to sort out the rebellious Kurds.

Gen Majid decided to attack Kurdish villages using chemical weapons, earning himself the nickname Chemical Ali. In a tape later captured by Kurdish rebels, Gen Majid declared: "I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community? Fuck them!"

A chain-smoking pot-bellied officer, with no educational qualifications, Gen Majid's genocidal ruthlessness impressed Saddam who rewarded his cousin by making him interior and then defence minister.

During the last Gulf war, after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Gen Majid was appointed Kuwait's new governor. He wasted little time in systematically looting the country, and executing and torturing many of its citizens.

"He is a criminal. He is a thug," Mudhar Shawkat, a leading member of Iraq's opposition, said yesterday. "He is someone who will look you in the eyes. If he doesn't like what he finds he has you killed."

He added: "Saddam trusts him because he has committed many terrible and horrible crimes. Al-Majid knows that when Saddam goes he will go too."

He appears frequently on Iraqi state television - dressed in a green olive uniform.

But he rarely ventures out in public, preferring to stay in his villas in Baghdad or Tikrit, the town where he and Saddam grew up.

Just before war broke out thousands of Kurds poured out of the northern oil city of Kirkuk following rumours that Gen Majid had dropped in for a visit.

"Last time he came in 1991 [to suppress the uprisings after the last Gulf war] thousands of people disappeared," one refugee said. "We never saw them again."