Baghdad, Iraq ? Ali Hassan Majid, the notorious cousin of Saddam Hussein who earned the nickname “Chemical Ali” for using poisonous gas to kill thousands of Kurds, has been captured, the U.S. military said Thursday.

Majid ranked No. 5 on the U.S. “most wanted” list of 55 Iraqi figures and was the most powerful member of the former dictator’s inner circle still at large save Saddam himself. All but 15 on the list have been caught or killed, according to the U.S. Central Command.

Before the war, the Bush administration reportedly drew up a list of about a dozen senior Iraqi officials who could be tried on war crimes charges in a post-Saddam Iraq. Majid — who directed nearly every major campaign of repression by the former regime — was said to be on the list.

Since the war, U.S. officials have said that Iraq would take the lead in such a trial, although the United States was likely to assist in prosecutions.

U.S. forces Thursday also reported the arrest of a man they described as a leader of a pro-Saddam militia. The man, Rashid Mohammed, was suspected of trying to organize a 600-strong group of anti-West guerrillas. Officials said when he was captured 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, he held a piece of paper with 10 Iraqi names, possibly an assassination hit list, as well as a shopping list of explosives.

The arrests came as another U.S. soldier was killed in an attack in Baghdad and three more bodies were pulled from the wreckage of the U.N. mission here, taking the death toll in Tuesday’s car bombing to 24. The United Nations has decided to evacuate a third of its staff in the wake of the attack, an official said.

Top-secret capture

Majid’s capture could prove to be useful to U.S. authorities. He would have been privy to the development and production of weapons of mass destruction, if such programs existed, and might have knowledge of Saddam’s whereabouts.

British and U.S. forces reported in April that Majid had been killed in missile strikes on his home in the southern city of Basra, with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announcing that Majid’s “reign of terror” had ended. But about two months later, the administration acknowledged that the former army commander was probably still alive.

Few details emerged Thursday about his capture. He apparently was taken into custody several days ago, but the announcement was held up until now.

Gen. John Abizaid, who heads Central Command, said at a news conference at the Pentagon that there were indications that Majid had been connected to anti-American attacks while on the lam in Iraq. “Chemical Ali has been active in some ways in influencing people around him in a regional way,” Abizaid said.

His misdeeds — and apparent glee over killing and torture — put him on human rights groups’ lists of offenders.

“Al Majid was Saddam Hussein’s hatchet man,” Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in April after the erroneous reports of Majid’s death. “He was involved in some of the worst crimes of the Iraqi government, including genocide and crimes against humanity.”

‘Enemy No. 1 for the Kurds’

Among Kurds, there was joy at Majid’s capture — and demands for justice.

In Sulaymaniya in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, Faiq Mohammed Gulpi, a surgeon, said he wanted to see Majid tried and punished in Halabja, the town that was attacked with cyanide gas in March 1988 on Majid’s orders. About 5,000 people, including many children, were killed.

Majid also imposed Saddam’s “Arabization” program in northern Iraq, a campaign of demographic manipulation in which officials evicted Kurds and encouraged Arab settlement in an effort to create Arab majorities in the oil city of Kirkuk and other strategic areas in the north. Tens of thousands of Kurds were displaced.

“Ali Hassan Majid is a personal enemy of each Kurdish family,” said Mohammed Tawfik, the Baghdad representative of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two major parties in the northern region.

“There is not one (family) who has not lost someone because of him,” he said. “Majid is enemy No. 1 for the Kurds, even more than Saddam Hussein.”

In another incident that still shocks many Iraqis, Majid is remembered for overseeing the 1996 killing two of Saddam’s sons-in-law after they fled to Jordan and tried to defect but were lured back to Baghdad — and their deaths.

Presumably acting upon the wishes of Saddam, Majid directed the almost ritualistic deaths of the two men, Hussein Kamel Majid and Saddam Kamel Majid, brothers who had married two of Saddam’s daughters. It was an act of vengeance and tribal bloodletting that has attained almost mythical status in Iraq.

The brothers were also Majid’s nephews.