Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s Foreign Minister, Issued Death Sentence

Tariq Aziz, the former foreign minister under Saddam Hussein’s administration, was sentenced to death by hanging by Iraq’s highest criminal court. Aziz, 74, participated in a campaign that hunted and executed members of a Shiite religious party. Already Aziz was serving a combined sentence of 22 years for the 1992 execution of profiteering merchants and displacing food for the northern Iraqi Kurds. Last year, Aziz was transferred from U.S. custody to Iraqi custody, where he told the British press that the U.S. was "leaving Iraq to the wolves." No date is set for Aziz’s hanging but the former Iraqi minister has suffered several strokes in the Baghdad prison and tells the press he will likely die in jail.