Ali Hassan al-Majid, one of Saddam Hussein's most feared deputies, better known as "Chemical Ali," will be the first leader of the former government to be tried for "war crimes," Iraq's defense minister said Wednesday. 

"In the next few days we will have the trial of Ali Hassan al-Majid, one of the close followers of Saddam Hussein," Defense Minister Hazim al-Shaalan announced. "He will be the first to be tried."

Majid, who is accused of some of the worst crimes committed during Saddam's decades in power, including the gassing of up to 5,000 Kurds in northern Iraq in the late 1980s, is the only one of Saddam's deputies so far set for trial, Shaalan said.

Questions have been raised about the trials being rushed, with investigators only beginning to sift through the evidence against Saddam and his deputies and Iraq's justice system not yet ready for a major trial, with judges recently appointed.

There are also concerns that Saddam and his 11 top lieutenants, all held at a detention facility on the outskirts of Baghdad for the past year, have not had access to lawyers.

Eight of those 11 deputies last week briefly refused to eat in what one of their lawyers described as a "hunger strikez" to protest the legality of their detentions and demand more access to the International Committee for the Red Cross.

Also yesterday, three Polish soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq, where the country runs a multi-national division, the army said.

"Three soldiers died after engine failure forced a helicopter to make an emergency landing about eight kilometers from Kerbala," said Lieutenant-Colonel Artur Domanski, spokesman for the Polish-led multinational division in Iraq.

Four other soldiers were injured in the crash, Domanski said.

Poland will cut its military contingent in Iraq by nearly a third to 1,700 from February 2005, Polish Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski said yesterday.

The pullout, long discussed by Warsaw, is due to take place after Iraq's parliamentary elections scheduled for January 30, and coincides with the transfer of Polish troops to a safer region in the volatile Arab state.

"As of mid-February troops and military staff in Iraq will number up to 1,700," Szmajdzinski told reporters after a government meeting. "Our intentions are known to our allies ... and the vacancies (in the division) will not be filled."

He said a 700-strong reserve force based in Poland would remain on two-day alert.

Poland heads an 8,000-strong multi-national force, whose headquarters is being relocated to southern Iraq from the historic city of Babylon.

Warsaw, pressed by popular opposition to the deployment, has already said it would "not remain in Iraq an hour longer than is sensible," and in October Szmajdzinski floated the idea of withdrawing all troops by the end of 2005.

(China Daily December 16, 2004)