Iraq's special criminal court Monday acquitted Tariq Aziz, the man who once served as the urbane, cigar-smoking public face of Saddam Hussein's rule, delivering the most significant not-guilty verdict in a series of prosecutions for crimes against humanity that occurred before the U.S. invasion in 2003.Aziz, who will turn 73 next month, remained in custody, facing charges in two other cases. Only hours after his acquittal, he appeared before another judge to defend himself against charges that he was involved in a massacre of Kurds in 1983.
Even so, the verdict - the first in a case against him - was viewed as a sign of judicial fairness and independence for a controversial tribunal that has been deliberating the most heinous crimes of the Saddam era.
Aziz, who served as foreign minister of Iraq during the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and as Saddam's deputy prime minister during the U.S. invasion in 2003, was acquitted of culpability in a brutal crackdown against Shiite protesters that followed the assassination of a revered cleric, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed al-Sadr, in 1999.
The court convicted Ali Hassan al-Majid, a former aide known as "Chemical Ali" for ordering poison gas attacks against the Kurds in the 1980s, for his role in those killings, sentencing him to death for a third time.
Two other Saddam aides, Saif al-Din al-Mashhadani and Uglah Abid Siqir al-Kubaysi, both senior Baath party officials who appeared on the infamous deck of playing cards from the U.S. government for Iraq's most wanted officials, were also acquitted in the case.