Tareq Aziz sentenced to 15 years in jail

Iraq's top court on Wednesday sentenced former deputy premier Tareq Aziz and Saddam Hussein's hatchet-man "Chemical Ali" Hassan al-Majid to 15 years in jail for crimes against humanity. Aziz and Majid were among eight people on trial at the Iraqi High Tribunal over the 1992 murders of 42 Baghdad traders accused of racketeering while Iraq was under punishing UN sanctions imposed after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The two key figures in Saddam's ousted regime had risked the death penalty. It is the first conviction against Aziz, 73, who was Saddam's spokesman to the outside world for two decades but turned himself in after the regime was overthrown by US-led invading forces in March 2003. Wednesday's decision followed a verdict delivered by the Baghdad court on March 2 that condemned Majid, a half brother of Saddam, to his third death sentence over the murder of Shiite Muslims 10 years ago. However, the court had acquitted Aziz on the same charges of crimes against humanity. Majid himself was first 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.