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Chemical Ali is returned to US detention
facility after heart attack
23.4.2008
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April
23, 2008
BAGHDAD, -- Saddam Hussein's cousin, whose
execution has been delayed for months in a complex
legal and political battle, was returned to a U.S.
detention facility on Tuesday after suffering a
heart attack, U.S. officials said.
Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for the
strikes he ordered against Kurds in the 1980s, was
admitted to a U.S. medical facility on Sunday.
His lawyer, Badee Izzat Aref, said al-Majid had
suffered a heart attack after going on a hunger
strike with other defendants.
A U.S. military official familiar with the medical
records confirmed that al-Majid had suffered a heart
attack but said he was in stable condition and had
been returned to a U.S. detention facility.
The official,www.ekurd.net
who spoke on condition
of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to
disclose the information, said he had no information
about a hunger strike or the involvement of other
defendants. |
Ali Hassan al-Majid, first cousin of executed
dictator Saddam Hussein and also known as 'Chemical
Ali', 'Butcher of Kurdistan' sentenced to death over Kurdish genocide, |
Al-Majid has been
sentenced to hang
for his role in a brutal crackdown against the Kurds
in the 1980s. He is also on trial in a separate case
stemming from the suppression of a 1991 Shiite
uprising against Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime.
Aref, the defense attorney, said earlier this week
that both al-Majid and co-defendant Abdul-Ghani
Abdul-Ghafour were admitted to a U.S. medical
facility on Sunday after they passed out.
He said the two men, along with 13 other
co-defendants in the Shiite uprising trial started a
hunger strike on Friday to protest an order forcing
them to stay in cramped quarters at the courthouse
instead of their regular cells at the U.S. detention
facility Camp Cropper.
But, he said, al-Majid and six other defendants had
been returned to Camp Cropper on Tuesday and the
rest were to be returned on Wednesday.
Al-Majid was one of three former Saddam officials
sentenced to death in June after being convicted by
an Iraqi court of genocide, war crimes and crimes
against humanity for their part in the Operation
Anfal crackdown that killed nearly 200,000 Kurdish
civilians and guerrillas.
Anfal was an anti-Kurdish campaign led by the former
regime between 1986 and 1989 and involved a series
of military campaigns against the Kurdish Peshmerga
fighters as well as the mostly Kurdish civilian
population of southern Kurdistan 'northern Iraq'.
But influential Sunni Arabs and President Jalal
Talabani intervened and insisted that one of the
three others — former defense minister Sultan Hashim
al-Taie — be spared the gallows.
That delayed the execution of all three.
In February, the three-member presidential council,
which includes Talabani and the two vice presidents,
agreed to al-Majid's execution, but did not approve
the death sentences against the other two. Still, no
date for his execution has been announced.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, AP,
Agencies
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