THE capture of Ali Hassan al-Majid, the Iraqi fugitive known as “Chemical Ali”, has deprived Saddam Hussein of his most loyal and ruthless henchman, blamed for the deaths of thousands of his fellow Iraqis during three decades of loyal service to the ousted regime.

He was apparently captured by Task Force 20, an elite team responsible for netting prominent figures from the Saddam Hussein regime, and was being held at Baghdad airport for DNA tests.

Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, confirmed that Ali Hassan had been captured but refused to give details about how he was found or where he was being held. Mr Rumsfeld apparently waited until the tests had confirmed Chemical Ali’s identity before announcing his capture.

The coalition is hoping that he will prove a valuable source of information in the hunt for Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction.

At a Pentagon briefing, Mr Rumsfeld hinted at this possibility by saying that the US would know more about what Ali Hassan knew once “we have an opportunity to visit with him”.

There was delight in the Iraqi capital last night at the news: “I heard he used to dissolve people in acid. He wasn’t a man, he was an animal,” said Mustafa, a 22-year-old waiter at an ice-cream parlour. “He should be executed immediately, without trial.”

Words failed Rafi, a taxi driver who pretended to bite out the throat of a colleague while growling: “I’d like to do this to him.”

More than any other figure in prewar Iraq, Ali Hassan gained international notoriety for his brutal suppression of Iraqi Kurdish and Shia Muslim minorities, his bloody rule over occupied Kuwait and his stubborn defence of Basra in the closing days of the war.Pot-bellied, chainsmoking and foul-mouthed, Ali Hassan began his career as a lowly army motorcycle messenger. However, after a coup brought the Baathist regime to power he began a meteoric rise through the ranks, thanks to his cousin, Saddam Hussein.Ali Hassan became head of security in 1980 and displayed his true skills during the Iran-Iraq War when he became known as Saddam’s enforcer.

From 1987 he was put in charge of “Operation Anfal” (spoils of war) to punish Kurds in northern Iraq for their collaboration with Iran. Human rights groups estimate that 100,000 Kurds were killed in the scorched earth operation, when Iraqi forces used chemical weapons against villagers. In the single worst use of poison gas against civilians, 5,000 Kurds were killed by chemical agents in the town of Halabja in March 1988.

In a videotape captured by the Kurds after the war, Ali Hassan is seen exhorting his men to be merciless and not to worry about the consequences. “Who is going to say anything? The international community? F*** them!” His terrible reputation made him the perfect candidate to become Iraq’s first governor of the 19th province, the name given to Kuwait when it was occupied by Iraqi forces in August 1991. Ali Hassan oversaw the systematic looting of the emirate and was responsible for imprisoning, torturing and killing anyone who opposed the Iraqi occupation.

After Iraqi forces were driven out of Kuwait, and Saddam faced a widespread uprising by Shia Muslims in southern Iraq, his enforcer was sent into action again.

Tens of thousand of Iraqis were murdered in the suppression of the Shias, whose mass graves are still being dug up to this day. In one video, Ali Hassan is seen instructing a helicopter crew on their mission: “Don’t come back until you are able to tell me you have burnt them.”

After serving as Defence Minister, he was abruptly relieved of his duties 1995 on corruption charges and faced a serious crisis in his relations with Saddam. His loyalty was then thrown into question after two of his nephews defected to Jordan with their families and revealed the regime’s secret weapons of mass destruction programmes to the West. The two men were lured back in 1996 to Baghdad and Ali Hassan personally took part in the murder of the two, their father and several other members of his clan.

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