Ali Hassan al-Majeed, an Iraqi general who became known as "Chemical Ali" for ordering poison-gas attacks on Kurdish civilians, was hanged Monday in Baghdad after a special tribunal handed him his fourth death sentence for crimes against humanity during the regime of his cousin, Saddam Hussein.

Gen. Majeed, 68, received his final sentence Jan. 17 for his most notorious offense: the March 1988 chemical-weapons attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in northeastern Iraq. An estimated 5,000 Kurds died and as many as 10,000 others were injured when Iraqi aircraft dropped a variety of chemical bombs containing mustard gas, nerve gas and other toxic agents. It was the deadliest chemical attack against civilians in history.

Authorities delayed carrying out Gen. Majeed's three previous convictions in part so that survivors of the Halabja attack could have their day in court. The hanging of the man also known as the "Butcher of Kurdistan" set off rejoicing in Iraq's Kurdish region and among Kurdish politicians in Baghdad.

Over nearly three decades as the right-hand man of Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator who was executed in December 2006, Gen. Majeed earned a reputation for exceptional ruthlessness in a regime known for its brutality. He commanded a scorched-earth campaign, code-named Anfal, that killed an estimated 180,000 people in less than a year as part of a drive to crush a Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq. Operations he directed against uprisings by Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq also resulted in thousands of deaths.

"Majeed was Saddam Hussein's hatchet man. He was involved in some of the worst crimes of the Iraqi government, including genocide and crimes against humanity," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Majeed represented the worst of the Iraqi government, and that's saying quite a lot."

Gen. Majeed served his cousin, to whom he bore a striking resemblance, as a military adviser, intelligence chief, interior minister, defense minister and military commander at various times during his career. After Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait in August 1990, Gen. Majeed headed the occupation for three months as military governor, presiding over the brutal repression and systematic looting of the oil-rich emirate.

Born in Tikrit -- also Hussein's home town -- on Nov. 30, 1941, Gen. Majeed grew up in a poor family and received little formal education. He was a driver in the Iraqi army and a motorcycle messenger before his fortunes turned in 1968, when Hussein's Baath Party regained power. He rose in the hierarchy with Hussein, the regime's strongman, who formally assumed the presidency in 1979 and began a purge of Baathist officials deemed disloyal. As targeted officials were led out of a videotaped meeting one by one, many of them to be executed later, Gen. Majeed told Hussein he had been "too gentle, too merciful."

Following an unsuccessful 1982 attempt to assassinate Hussein in the town of Dujail, a Shiite stronghold north of Baghdad, Gen. Majeed directed a campaign of collective punishment in which hundreds of residents were arrested, many were tortured and dozens were executed.

It was as head of the Northern Bureau of the Baath Party in the late 1980s that Gen. Majeed led the Anfal campaign, ordering the use of chemical weapons against autonomy-seeking Kurds. More than 4,000 Kurdish villages were razed and their inhabitants either massacred or deported to southern Iraq, according to human rights organizations.

After Iraq's defeat in the Persian Gulf War in early 1991, Gen. Majeed was named interior minister and given responsibility for crushing revolts by Iraqi Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north. Among the victims in the south were Iraq's marsh Arabs, whose numbers were decimated by disappearances, executions and forced relocations.

When U.S. forces invaded Iraq in March 2003, Gen. Majeed was serving as commander of the country's southern region and was listed as the Americans' fifth-most-wanted man. He survived a U.S. airstrike the next month but was eventually captured by U.S. troops in August 2003.

During his first trial, in 2006, on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for his role in the Anfal campaign, Gen. Majeed was unapologetic, insisting that he was right to order the demolition of Kurdish villages near the end of the Iran-Iraq war because they were "full of Iranian agents."

In one of a series of tape-recorded conversations that were played during the trial, Gen. Majeed told senior Baath Party officials in 1988, referring to the Kurds: "I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community? [Expletive] them!"

Gen. Majeed received the death sentence after that trial and a subsequent one in which he was charged with involvement in suppressing Shiites in the south in 1991, when tens of thousands were reported killed. A video that later emerged showed Gen. Majeed personally shooting captured Shiite rebels in the head with a pistol and kicking others in the face as they sat on the ground. Gen. Majeed was also sentenced to death in March 2009 for a 1999 crackdown against Shiites who had risen up in reaction to the assassination of a revered Shiite cleric.

"Justice has been done," leading Kurdish legislator Fouad Masoum told Reuters in Baghdad after Monday's hanging. "This criminal has gotten what he deserved for the atrocities he committed against innocent people. I hope he will be a lesson for others."

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