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Tareq Aziz trial adjourned until May 20
30.4.2008
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April
30, 2008
BAGHDAD, - Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister
Tareq Aziz went on trial on charges of executing 42
businessmen in 1992. The judge adjourned the trial,
citing the absence of the eighth co-accused, Ali
Hassan al-Majid, also known as "Chemical Ali".
Tareq Aziz, the international face of hanged Iraqi
president Saddam Hussein's regime, went on trial on
Tuesday on charges of executing 42 Baghdad
businessmen in 1992 that could see him sentenced to
death.
Dressed in a brown suit and using a walking stick,
Aziz joined six other defendants in court for the
opening of the trial, which had been delayed for
several hours.
The eighth defendant, Ali Hassan al-Majid, better
known as Chemical Ali, is already on death row after
being convicted of genocide for his part in the
killing of tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians in
the late 1980s.
He was not in court, with presiding judge Rauf
Rasheed Abdel Rahman, himself a Kurd, declaring that
Majid had submitted a medical certificate saying he
was unwell.
Defence lawyers have often complained that Aziz has
suffered from ill health while in US custody, and
the man once famous for his big cigars coughed badly
throughout Tuesday's 45-minute session.
Soon after proceedings began, Aziz demanded a new
lawyer, saying his counsel "Badie Aref was unable to
attend due to security reasons."
The judge later adjourned the trial until May 20.
Aziz, who walked slowly to the dock when the trial
began and took the seat which was once occupied by
Saddam, was returning to the public eye after five
years in US custody.
He was known worldwide as the main spokesman for
Saddam's brutal regime.
In 2003, he undertook a high-profile tour of
European capitals for talks with political leaders
and the late pope John Paul II in a bid to stop the
US-led invasion.
Now he stands accused, with the others, of executing
businessmen for hiking food prices when Iraq was
under tight UN economic sanctions. |
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. |
Prosecutors say the businessmen were arrested in
Baghdad's wholesale markets and executed after a
speedy trial in 1992. They also charge that the
former regime then seized their money and property.
According to Iraqi law, if Aziz is found guilty he
could be sentenced to life imprisonment or even
death by hanging.
Aziz's son Ziad insists his father is innocent.
He has described the evidence as weak and aimed at
preventing his father from benefiting from an
amnesty law which stipulates that anyone held for a
year without being referred for trial should be
released.
Since he surrendered to US forces in April 2003, "my
father has been in prison for five years... without
being charged, tried or investigated," Ziad said.
Aziz, Chemical Ali and Saddam's half-brother, Watban
Ibrahim al-Hassan, are the most high profile of the
eight defendants.
Judge Abdel Rahman is the man who sentenced Saddam
to death in 2006 for his role in the killing of 148
Shiite civilians from Dujail after an assassination
attempt against him in the town in 1982.
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.
Now in his early 70s, the urbane Aziz, with his
mastery of English, put a cultured gloss on Saddam's
regime in its dealings with the West.
He was born in Iraq's main northern city of Mosul to
a Chaldean Catholic family. He changed his given
name, Michael Yuhanna, to Tareq Aziz to allay any
Arab nationalist hostility to his Christian
background.
He had known Saddam since the 1950s but was kept
outside the closed circle of Saddam's Sunni Arab
clansmen from the central region of Tikrit.
Although he was not implicated in any of the most
notorious crimes of Saddam's regime, Aziz became one
of its best-known advocates to the outside world and
renowned for his anti-Western tirades.
His defence of Saddam continued even after his
longtime master's execution when at a trial of some
of the hanged president's lieutenants last year he
took the witness box to praise him.
Little has been heard of him since he gave himself
up a month after the invasion, except for occasional
health-related statements from his defence lawyer
and from his family.
In December 2006, his son said Aziz had suffered a
heart attack in custody.
The other defendants include Sabbawi Ibrahim
al-Hassan, chief of public security from 1991 to
1995 and Mizban Khudier Hadi, a former Revolutionary
Command Council member.
Rounding out the group are Saddam's secretary Abid
Hamid Mahmud, former finance minister Ahmed Hussein
Khudier and former central bank governor Essam
Rasheed Khuwaish.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, AFP
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