The Iraqi government says U.S. forces have handed over 55 former members of Saddam Hussein’s government, including

Tariq Aziz

, his former foreign minister.

Busho Ibrahim, Iraq’s deputy justice minister, said on Wednesday that the detainees also include Saddam’s former oil and culture ministers.

The U.S. military in Baghdad confirmed that some detainees were handed over, but refused to name them.

Badie Aref, Aziz’s Amman-based lawyer, confirmed that his client was handed over to Iraqi authorities.

“The American side handed over Aziz and other detainees to the Iraqi side on Tuesday night,” Aref said.

“Aziz called me and said he was being held in the Kadhimiya prison in Baghdad.”

Aref also warned that his client’s life was in danger, saying that Iraqi authorities might execute him. Several other high-ranking Baathists, including Saddam and Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, have been executed by the Iraqi government in recent years.

Aziz surrendered himself shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. He was brought to trial five years later, and in 2009, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison for two separate crimes.

He received a 15-year sentence for the summary executions of dozens of people in 1992, and a seven-year sentence for helping to displace thousands of Kurds from nothern Iraq.

The 74-year-old Aziz was one of the most recognizable faces of Saddam Hussein’s administration.