Majid sentenced to death over Friday prayers Feb. incidents

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: Iraq’s Supreme Criminal Court on Monday sentenced to death Ali Hassan al-Majid, Mahmoud Fizi Mohammed, Aziz Saleh Hassan for their role in the 1999 Friday prayers incidents. Two defendants in the case, Ali Latif Nassif Jassem and Mohammed Zimam Abdelrazzaq, were sentenced to life in prison; while four others, Tareq Aziz, Seif al-Din Mahmoud, Akla Abad Sakr and Ibrahim Saheb Karam were acquitted by the court. The Friday prayers incidents erupted after the assassination of Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Muhammad Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr and his two sons in Najaf province in February, 1999, whose death is blamed on the former regime’s intelligence agencies. The death of Sadr, the father of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, was followed by security tension in many Iraqi cities then, including the then Saddam City, where the al-Mohsin and al-Hikma mosques were attacked, leaving a large number of worshipers killed and scores others detained. Fourteen officials from the former regime had stood before the Supreme Criminal Court on charges of detaining a large number of civilians, lynching many of them, rendering several families homeless and decimating whole villages in the provinces of Baghdad, Missan, Samawa and Basra in February 1999. Of these 14, eight were senior officials and party leaders of the former regime. SS (S) 1