Iraqi Court Acquits Tariq Aziz

[struggle4progress]

Source: NYT

By STEVEN LEE MYERS
Published: March 2, 2009

BAGHDAD — ... Mr. 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 the massacre of Kurds in 1983 ...

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, 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 1980’s, for his role in those killings, sentencing him to death for a third time.

Two other Hussein 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 for Iraq’s most wanted, were also acquitted in the case ...

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/world/middleeast/03iraq.html?_r=1&ref=world

[ck4829]

1. Now when do they convict the CIA agents who helped "calibrate" the chemical weapons...

So the Iraqis could use them to kill with maximum efficiency?