ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Ajaj Ahmed al-Tikriti, infamously known as Hajaj Nugra Salman, a former Iraqi security official responsible for executing and torturing Kurdish civilians, was sentenced to death by a Baghdad court on Thursday, The New Region’s correspondent confirmed. 

“Hajaj has been sentenced to death,” The New Region’s Baghdad correspondent Daroon Malanaji said, after the court issued its verdict over the atrocities the convict committed against the Kurds. 

Last Thursday, dozens of Kurdish witnesses and their relatives gathered at a Baghdad court to testify against Hajaj. The trial was open to the public, and many journalists and relevant entities were present at the site.

The trial resumed earlier in the morning, as more witnesses gathered to testify. 

According to The New Region's correspondent, Hajaj was convicted of sexual assault, physical abuse, and mass murder.

Hajaj, the infamous executioner of Kurds at the notorious Nugra Salman prison during the Baathist regime’s brutal Anfal campaign, spent around three decades in hiding before eventually being arrested by security forces following a lengthy investigation.

The Nugra Salman prison, a relentless prison complex in the deserts of Muthanna province, is recounted as a place of daily beatings, starvation, and fear by the Kurds who suffered through the Baath era. It is also where Hajaj would torture countless of his victims.

During the brutal Anfal campaign in 1988, which sought to suppress Kurdish resistance against the Baathist regime and saw myriad punitive atrocities perpetrated by former dictator Saddam Hussein's forces against civilian Kurds, thousands of Kurdish men were transported to the Nugra Salman prison, where Hajaj had ruled. 

The prison held between 6,000 and 8,000 people, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.