IRAQ:THE TRIAL of Tariq Aziz, Iraq's former deputy premier, and seven co-defendants was delayed yesterday due to heavy shelling of the fortified Green Zone where the court is located. It has been adjourned until May 20th.
The accused face death sentences for complicity in the 1992 execution of 42 merchants charged with trying to drive up food prices during the UN sanctions regime.
Mr Aziz's son, Ziad, said his father was innocent and claimed the government aimed to prevent "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."
His co-defendants include Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam Hussein's cousin, who has already been sentenced to hang; and half-brothers Watban Ibrahim, former interior minister; and Sabbawi Ibrahim, a security chief.
Presiding over the proceedings is Raouf Rashid Abdel Rahman, a Kurdish judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to death in 2006 for his role in the killing of 148 Shias in the town of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt against him. He was hanged in December 2006 and three colleagues were subsequently executed.
Mr Aziz's lawyers have accused the special tribunal of seeking to punish him for refusing to testify against Saddam at his trial and complained that his confinement at US-run Camp Cropper in a small cell has exacerbated a heart ailment and diabetes. They are expected to argue that Mr Aziz simply signed a warrant issued by Iraq's supreme body, the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), ordering the traders' execution.
Tariq Aziz was born into a Chaldean Catholic family in 1936 in a village near Mosul. He studied English at the Baghdad College of Fine Arts and worked as a journalist. After joining the Baath Party in 1957, he changed his name from Michael Yuhanna to Tariq Aziz. He rose through the ranks once the party seized power in 1968, was appointed to the RCC in 1977 and served as deputy prime minister from 1979-2003 and foreign minister from 1983-1991.
He became the regime's voice as he trotted the globe to explain Iraq's policies. In 1980 he survived an assassination attempt staged by the Iran-backed Dawa party, to which current Iraqi premier Nuri al-Maliki belongs. The attack, which killed several civilians, was used to justify an offensive against Iran and precipitated an eight-year war.
He defended Iraq's 1990 occupation of Kuwait and claimed correctly that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, Washington's casus belli for the 2003 war. Mr Aziz, who is number eight on the US list of 55 wanted Iraqi leaders, surrendered in April 2003.
Chaldean patriarch, Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, has called for his release. Others on the list have been freed, including scientists involved in Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programmes, while other senior figures were allowed to leave Iraq.
