By DPA
Baghdad : The US and Iraq have agreed to drop the death sentence against Saddam Hussein’s last defence minister, Sultan Hashim, the Dubai-based al-Arabya television channel cited unnamed sources as saying.
Hashim along with Saddam’s cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, and the former deputy commander of operations of the Iraqi army, Hussein Rashid, were sentenced to death on June 24, 2007 over the 1987 ethnic cleansing campaign against Kurds in Anfal.
An appeals court upheld the sentences in early September. Over 180,000 Kurds perished in a chemical weapons attack launched by the Saddam regime.
During the past few weeks, reports had said that the three would face the gallows immediately after Eid-ul-Fitr, the Muslim feast to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan last weekend.
The pending hanging of Sultan, now in US custody, has sparked public disapproval by Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani and Vice-President Tariq al-Hashimi.
The Shia spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has also called on Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to drop the death sentence against Sultan, the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat reported Sunday.
Many Iraqis are concerned the hanging of Sultan, a respected Sunni soldier, could disrupt an already shaky reconciliation attempt in a deeply divided country.
If the US military hands Sultan over for execution, the move would contradict guarantees of safety given to the general when he voluntarily surrendered to the US army in 2003.