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Ali Hassan al-Majid, a former Iraqi official known as Chemical Ali, has been executed by hanging, a government spokesman has announced. Majid, an enforcer in Saddam Hussein's regime and his cousin, had earlier been sentenced to death four times for a range of crimes against humanity. In January, he was sentenced to death for ordering the gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988. It is believed that about 5,000 people died in the attack. Majid was sentenced to hang in June 2007 for his role in a military campaign against ethnic Kurds, codenamed Anfal, that lasted from February to August of 1988. In December 2008 he also received a death sentence for his role in crushing a Shia revolt after the 1991 Gulf War. In March 2009 he was sentenced to death, along with others, for the 1999 killings of Shia Muslims in the Sadr City district of Baghdad.