A British private security contractor and former paratrooper has been jailed for life after an Iraqi court found him guilty of murdering two colleagues.
Danny Fitzsimons was the first westerner to stand trial in Iraq since immunity from prosecution was lifted for security workers in 2009.
The maximum available sentence the Baghdad court could have imposed was the death penalty.
In August 2009, Fitzsimons fatally shot fellow Briton Paul McGuigan and Australian Darren Hoare following a whisky-drinking binge, 36 hours after arriving in the capital.
The prosecution said he had murdered the two men execution-style, firing bullets from his pistol at point-blank range.
Fitzsimons' defence was that during a row over old regimental loyalties, his victims had attacked him with an M4 rifle so he defended himself with his own weapon.
He also maintained he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Kosovo and Iraq and had admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
Three psychiatric assessments have agreed with that diagnosis.
In handing down the verdict, the head judge of the three-judge panel said Fitzsimons' mental condition was taken into consideration when deciding on the sentence.
Fitzsimons will now be moved from a two-metre square cell that he shares with 11 other men inside Baghdad's Green Zone and into the capital's main Russaffa Prison.
"This is a very good decision, and very good result - he has been saved from death," said Fitzsimons's Iraqi lawyer Tariq Harb.
"But we have to send the appeal within days and we hope to get a further reduction," he said.
However, Fitzsimons has told family that he is a "dead man" as he is terrified that he will be a target for inmates as a former British serviceman and private security contractor.
His family are to meet Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt in London to request the British Government intervene to establish a prisoner transfer agreement with Iraq, so that the contractor can serve his time in a British jail.