Najm al-Sadoon; Iraqi Journalist Imprisoned as a Saudi Spy

Najm al-Sadoon, 83, an Iraqi journalist imprisoned in the 1980s as a spy for Saudi Arabia. Al-Sadoon was the Baghdad correspondent of the Saudi daily Al-Riyad when he was arrested in 1986 and charged with spying for the oil-rich kingdom. His friends said at the time that he was accused of divulging economic information to Saudi diplomats based in the Iraqi capital. A revolutionary court sentenced him to death, but President Saddam Hussein commuted the sentence to life imprisonment in an apparent bid to appease Saudi Arabia, among Baghdad’s staunchest supporters in the Iraq-Iran war. Al-Sadoon lost his sight in prison, which Iraqi exile friends blamed on the denial of treatment for eye problems. Al-Sadoon had worked as a journalist for several Iraqi newspapers during the days of the monarchy, which ended in a bloody 1958 military coup. He later set up his own publications. On Monday in a Baghdad prison.