However, the Iraqi High Tribunal acquitted former deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz, 73, long regarded as Saddam's spokesman to the outside world, on the same charges of crimes against humanity.

Majid, a former defence minister and cousin of the executed dictator, was condemned to death for "premeditated murders as crimes against humanity."

"Chemical Ali" and Aziz were accused with 12 other officials of Saddam's regime of involvement in the deaths of dozens of Shiites in 1999 in the Sadr City district of Baghdad and in the central shrine city of Najaf.

Troops were ordered into Shiite areas to stop public protests after the assassination of revered Shiite cleric Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, after whom Sadr City is named.

Among the 12 other officials, former army officer Mahmud Faizi al-Hazaa and senior Baath Party official Aziz Saleh Hassan were also condemned to death.

Seven others were given jail sentences of between six years and life imprisonment. Three were acquitted.

Majid was sentenced to death in June 2007 for genocide after ordering the deaths of tens of thousands of Kurds during the 1988 Anfal campaign, when Iraqi forces strafed villages with poison gas, the source of his grim nickname.

He was also given a second death penalty for war crimes and crimes against humanity over a bloody crackdown on Shiites during their ill-fated uprising after the 1991 Gulf War.

However, his execution has been repeatedly delayed and he remains in US custody.

He and Aziz, whose acquittal on Monday was the first verdict from four trials in which he is a defendant, are due to be sentenced in another case on March 11.

That trial is for crimes against humanity over the 1992 execution of 42 Baghdad wholesalers who were accused of speculating on food prices when Iraq was under punishing UN sanctions.

The two men, along with former interior minister Watban Ibrahim Hassan and Saddam's private secretary Abed Hamud, are among 16 former officials on trial for a brutal 1980s campaign against Shiite Kurds.

They are accused of using members of the Fayli Kurdish community as guinea pigs for chemicals weapons testing and as human shields during Iraq's war with neighbouring Iran from 1980 to 1988.

Fayli Kurds live mainly in Baghdad and in Diyala province northeast of the capital and unlike most Kurds they follow the Shiite branch of Islam.

They once played a major role in business in the capital but many were expelled to neighbouring Iran after Saddam's Sunni Arab-dominated regime cast doubts on their Iraqi nationality.

Chemical Ali and Aziz are also accused of displacing and killing about 2,000 clansmen of Kurdish regional president Massoud Barzani.

Aziz, a Christian, turned himself in to US forces in April 2003 after they overthrew Saddam's regime. His son charged last year that he was being held in very bad conditions and was suffering from a variety of ailments.

Saddam himself was hanged in December 2006 for the killing of 148 Shiite residents of Dujail following an abortive 1982 assassination attempt against the then president in the mainly Shiite town, north of Baghdad.

The United States set up the Iraqi High Tribunal in 2004 to try former officials of Saddam's regime.