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Tareq Aziz trial begins at Iraqi High
Tribunal
29.4.2008
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April
29, 2008
BAGHDAD, - The trial begins in Iraq on
Tuesday of Tareq Aziz, former deputy premier and the
international face of the Saddam Hussein regime, on
charges related to the execution of 42 Baghdad
merchants in 1992.
It is the fourth trial of former regime officials by
the Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT), the court set up to
try high-ranking officials under Saddam.
Judge Muneer Haddad from the IHT confirmed to AFP
that the trial will begin on Tuesday.
Tareq Aziz and seven others, including "Chemical"
Ali Hasan al-Majid, are accused of executing the
Baghdad businessmen after blaming them for hiking
food prices when Iraq was under UN sanctions.
Prosecutors say the victims were arrested in
Baghdad's wholesale markets and executed after a
speedy trial in 1992. They also allege that the
former regime then seized their money and property.
According to his son, Tareq Aziz is innocent of the
charges against him.
Ziad Aziz also described the charges against his
father as "weak" and aimed at "preventing him from
taking advantage of the amnesty law which states
that anyone held for a year without being referred
to court must be released."
"My father has been in prison for five years...
without being charged, tried or investigated," he
said.
Aziz and Majid, who is already on death row after
being convicted of genocide for overseeing the
killings of Kurdish villagers in 1988, are the two
most high profile defendants in the new trial.
The other six are Watban Ibrahim al-Hassan,
half-brother of Saddam and former interior minister;
Sabbawi Ibrahim al-Hassan,www.ekurd.net
chief of public security
from 1991 to 1995; Mizban Khudier Hadi, a member of
the former Revolutionary Command Council; Saddam's
secretary Abid Hamid Mahmud; Ahmed Hussein Khudier,
a former finance minister; and ex-governor of the
central bank Essam Rasheed Khuwaish.
The trial of Aziz, who surrendered to US forces in
April 2003, will be presided over by Kurdish judge
Rauf Rasheed Abdel Rahman, who sentenced Saddam to
death in 2006 for his role in the killing of 148
Shiites in the town of Dujail after an assassination
attempt against him in 1982. |
Tariq Aziz was the international face of Saddam's
bloody government for years
Saddam Hussein's half-brother. Former Interior
Minister Watban Ibrahim al-Hassan
Judge Rauf Rasheed Abdel Rahman, an Iraqi Kurd, will
preside at the trial. He is the same judge who
sentenced Saddam Hussein to death. |
Saddam was hanged on
December 30, 2006. His cohorts Taha Yassin Ramadan,
Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Ahmed al-Bandar
met the same fate after being convicted over the
Dujail killings.
Majid and two other former regime officials are on
death row for the Kurdish killings during the
so-called Anfal campaign in the final year of the
eight-year Iraq-Iran war.
Majid is also on trial for his role in crushing the
1991 Shiite uprising that followed the first Gulf
War, the third trial being conducted by the IHT.
On Thursday Aziz's lawyer Badie Aref told AFP in
Amman that the defence team will attend the trial
"if the security situation is suitable."
The urbane cigar-smoking Aziz, with his mastery of
English, put a cultured gloss on Saddam's regime in
its dealings with the West.
At one of last year's hearings during the Anfal
trial, Aziz praised Saddam defiantly when he was
called as a witness.
"I had the honour to work with the former regime and
with the hero Saddam Hussein," he said from the
stand.
"He is the hero behind the unity of Iraq and its
sovereignty. This is an honour to me," Aziz added,
much to the distress of the judge and prosecutors.
His lawyers have often complained of his ill health
during the past five years of custody.
Little has been heard of Aziz since he gave himself
up, except for occasional health-related statements
from Aref and from his family.
In December 2006, his son said Aziz had suffered a
heart attack in custody.
Aziz was born a Christian in the northern Iraqi city
of Mosul to a Chaldean Catholic family. He changed
his given name, Michael Yuhanna, to Tareq Aziz.
He had known Saddam since the 1950s, and despite
being kept outside the closed circle of Saddam's
Sunni Arab colleagues he became one of the regime's
best-known figures for his anti-West tirades.
Aref has in the past charged that Aziz was being
held in a room "reserved for dogs," measuring just
two metres (yards) by one metre, which he was
allowed to leave only for brief periods.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, AFP
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