‘Chemical Ali,’ Under Death Sentence, Suffers Heart Attack
BAGHDAD: Saddam Hussein’s cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, who is known as Chemical Ali, has been taken to an American military hospital after suffering a heart attack while in custody awaiting execution, officials said.
Major Brad Leighton, an American military spokesman in Baghdad, confirmed that Majid was in a hospital after “falling ill,” saying only that he was “in a stable condition.”
He was admitted on Sunday and that no-one else appeared to be involved, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss his condition.
Majid was among three of the former dictator’s lieutenants who were sentenced to death by an Iraqi court last June for war crimes after they were found guilty of using poisonous gas against the Kurds in northern Iraq in the 1980s.
However their executions have been delayed because of a disagreement between Iraq’s Shiite-led government and its Presidency Council about whether the death penalty should be carried out. In the meantime they remain in American custody.
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