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Ex-Saddam aide gets 7 years for Kurdish case

Other News Materials 3 August 2009 13:10 (UTC +04:00)

Iraq's ex-deputy premier Tariq Aziz and Saddam Hussein's hatchet-man "Chemical Ali" have been sentenced to seven years in jail for expelling Kurds, reported PressTV.

As a result of Saddam's campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s, dozens of villages were destroyed, thousands of people were displaced and many children were separated from their families.

"Because you committed the crime of forced displacement against the Kurdish people, the court has decided to sentence you to seven years in prison," Judge Mahmoud Salih told the two in Iraq's High Tribunal court.

Aziz was earlier given a 15-year sentence for his involvement in the execution of 42 merchants in 1992.

The merchants were accused by Saddam of manipulating food supplies to drive up food prices while the country was under punishing UN sanctions imposed after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Lawyers say the two sentences will be combined, and Aziz will have to serve a total of 22 years in jail.

On the same court session on Sunday, Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" also received a seven-year sentence for chasing the Shia Kurds out of the northern provinces of Kirkuk and Diyala in 1980.

Four other former regime members received six years in jail while five were acquitted.

Chemical Ali was sentenced to death in June 2007 for genocide after ordering the deaths of tens of thousands of Kurds during the 1988 Anfal campaign, when villagers were bombed with poison gas.

He was also given a second death penalty for war crimes and crimes against humanity over a bloody crackdown on Shias during their ill-fated uprising after the 1991 Gulf War.

Aziz meanwhile was cleared of any role in the brutal crackdown.

Aziz, one of Saddam Hussein's best-known lieutenants and a fluent English speaker, was named foreign minister in 1983 and then deputy prime minister in 1991, becoming known as his master's voice abroad.

He gave himself up to US troops in April 2003 -- two weeks after former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was over-thrown by US-led forces.

Saddam was hanged in December 2006 for his role in the killing of 148 Shia residents in the town of Dujail, following a 1982 assassination attempt.

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