Iraq court acquits Tariq Aziz of charges in 1999 Shiite crackdown

Iraq's special criminal court on Monday acquitted Tariq Aziz, the man who once served as the urbane, cigar-smoking public face of Saddam Hussein's rule, in the first of three cases against him, delivering the most significant not guilty verdict in the prosecutions for crimes against humanity that occurred before the American invasion in 2003. The acquittal was on charges of responsibility for a brutal crackdown against Shiite protesters that followed the assassination of a revered cleric, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, in 1999. Mr. Aziz, who will turn 73 next month, remained in custody. Only hours after his acquittal, he appeared before another judge to defend himself against charges that he was involved in the massacre of Kurds in 1983. Even so, the verdict was viewed as a sign of judicial fairness and independence for a tribunal that has been deliberating the most heinous crimes of Mr. Hussein's era. The court on Monday convicted Ali Hassan al-Majid, a former Hussein aide known as "Chemical Ali" for ordering poison gas attacks against the Kurds in the 1980s, for his role in the killings for which Mr. Aziz was acquitted. For a third time, he was sentenced to death. Two other Hussein aides, Saif al-Din al-Mashhadani and Uglah Abid Siqir al-Kubaysi, both senior Baath party officials who appeared on the well-known deck of playing cards depicting Iraq's most wanted, were also acquitted in the case. The court, officially the Iraqi High Tribunal, was created after the 2003 invasion during the period of the American provisional government to prosecute cases against Mr. Hussein and his senior aides. It has dismissed charges and delivered acquittals in a handful of other cases, but none involving a defendant as prominent as Mr. Aziz, who served as Iraq's foreign minister during the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and as Mr. Hussein's deputy prime minister during the American invasion in 2003. Reaction to the verdict was mixed. "According to the Constitution, the judiciary is independent; no one has a right to interfere with the decisions that come from the court," Abbas al-Baiaty, a member of Parliament allied with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki's Dawa Party, said in a telephone interview. "We respect these decisions from this court because it is objective." By contrast, a member of the movement now led by the grand ayatollah's son, Moktada, denounced the verdict. The member, Liqa Jaffar al-Yassin, who is also a member of Parliament, said, "This decision devalues the blood of Sadrists." Mr. Aziz turned himself in to American forces in April 2003. He appeared in court looking frail and aged, dressed in a black suit. When the judge finished reading the verdict, Mr. Aziz showed little emotion, but raised his hand and said simply, "Thank you." In his second courtroom appearance of the day, however, he disputed that he had had a role in the massacre of Kurds, saying he had been defending Kurdish rights, and criticized the court in general. "Here is another false allegation," Mr. Aziz said, and then referred to his earlier verdict. "After 61 sessions they found the allegations were false and acquitted me." His lawyer, Badea Araf Azzit, said the court was illegal and complained that it had dragged out trials like Mr. Aziz's. "I don't know why they kept him for five years and just today they acquitted him," he said.