Jordan ? Saadoun Hammadi, a longtime ally of Saddam Hussein and one of the most senior Iraq Baath party leaders – who also served as a rare Shiite prime minister under Saddam – has died at a hospital in Germany, a Baath party spokesman and the party’s Web site said.

Hammadi was released in February 2004 from a prison camp in Iraq, after nine months in the custody of U.S. troops. He left Iraq for medical treatment in Jordan, Lebanon and Germany, but settled in early 2005 in Qatar. He was believed to be suffering from leukemia.

Hammadi died late Wednesday in a German hospital, party spokesman Hisham Odeh said in Amman. The spokesman said he was told of the news by a friend of the Hammadi family in Qatar.

Under Saddam, Hammadi had the posts of foreign and oil minister, and was the last speaker of the Iraqi parliament up to the 2003 U.S. invasion.