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Iraq's Aziz due back in court without
foreign lawyers
20.5.2008
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May
20, 2008
BAGHDAD, -- Tareq Aziz, for years the
international face of the brutal regime of hanged
Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, is due back in the
dock on Tuesday but without his team of foreign
lawyers.
Aziz, 71, who served as foreign minister and deputy
prime minister under Saddam, faces charges linked to
the execution of 42 Baghdad merchants in 1992 and
could be sentenced to death if convicted.
His trial began in Baghdad last month but the first
hearing was abruptly adjourned after Aziz said he
wanted new lawyers because his Iraqi counsel Badie
Izzat Aref was unable to attend for "security
reasons."
The team of foreign lawyers who had agreed to defend
Aziz will not be present in court on Tuesday as they
were not granted visas to travel to Baghdad,www.ekurd.net
his Amman-based son Ziad
Aziz said.
They include French lawyer Jacques Verges, four
Italian lawyers and a Lebanese-French attorney.
Aziz is being tried at the Baghdad court presided
over by the same judge who sentenced Saddam to death
for his role in the killing of 148 Shiite civilians
after an assassination attempt against him in 1982. |
Tareq Aziz was the international face of Saddam's
bloody government for years
Tareq Aziz, at court |
Saddam was hanged on December 30, 2006. Aziz also
faces the prospect of death by hanging or life in
jail if convicted.
Aziz's lawyers had wanted the trial to be moved to
Iraqi Kurdistan in the relatively quiet north of the
country or to be transferred abroad to ensure it is
not influenced by the Baghdad government.
He surrendered to US forces in April 2003 shortly
after the liberation and stands accused, with seven
others, of executing businessmen for hiking food
prices at a time when Iraq was under tight UN
economic sanctions.
Prosecutors have said that the victims were arrested
in Baghdad's wholesale markets and executed after a
speedy trial in 1992. They also charge that Saddam's
regime then seized their money and property.
Aziz, Ali Hassan al-Majid -- otherwise known as
Chemical Ali -- and Saddam's half-brother Watban
Ibrahim al-Hassan are the most high profile of the
eight defendants.
Aziz 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 prevent any
Arab nationalist hostility to his Christian
background.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, AFP
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