Tareq Aziz, for years the international face of the brutal regime of hanged Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, was back in court on Tuesday - but without any lawyers to defend him. Aziz, 72, a Christian who served as Iraq's foreign minister and deputy prime minister under Saddam, is on trial over the execution of 42 Baghdad merchants in 1992 and could be sentenced to death if convicted.
Those who had tried to assassinate him in a 1980 attack were now out to finish the job, Aziz charged in a statement to the court. "I know it is a plot of personal revenge because the people who are governing Iraq now tried to kill me on the first of April 1980 in front of hundreds of people, but they did not succeed," he said. "Now they are saying, 'Let us do what we have failed to do in 1980'," Aziz said, adding that he was "proud" to have been a member of Saddam's now disbanded Baath party.
However, he could not be held responsible for the charges against him. A prosecutor outlined the accusations, saying that some merchants had their ears cut off and hands amputated for allegedly black marketeering or dealing in foreign currency between 1992 and 1995.
Aziz, who surrendered to US forces in April 2003 shortly after the invasion, stands accused of executing businessmen for hiking food prices at a time when Iraq was under tight UN economic sanctions. Prosecutor Adnan Ali called for "suitable punishment that will ease the hearts of widows and the oppressed." The trial is proceeding without the lawyers whom Aziz asked for when the case was first brought to trial on April 29.
The hearing at the Iraqi High Tribunal in Baghdad's top security Green Zone was adjourned to a later date after Aziz asked for new lawyers because his Iraqi counsel Badie Izzat Aref was unable to attend for "security reasons." Dressed in a grey suit, Aziz entered the court room on Tuesday with the aid of a walking stick.
Seven co-defendants, including Ali Hassan al-Majid - otherwise known as Chemical Ali who has already been sentenced to death for genocide in another case - were also in court. The team of foreign lawyers who had agreed to defend Aziz, including French lawyer Jacques Verges, four Italian lawyers and a Lebanese-French attorney, were not granted visas for Baghdad, his Amman-based son Ziad Aziz said.
Verges has defended some of the world's most notorious figures, including Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and Venezuelan terrorist "Carlos the Jackal." Aziz's son Ziad said that when he last spoke to his father on Wednesday he was "in a very bad health condition and coughing non-stop." Ziad said his father suffers from high blood pressure, diabetes and ongoing respiratory and heart problems since a heart attack in a US military prison in December 2007. "He needs surgery as soon as possible," he added.
Aziz is being tried 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.
Saddam was hanged on December 30, 2006 after a trial that was criticised by human rights groups. Aziz, who was born to a Chaldean Catholic family on February 1, 1936 in Sinjar west of the main northern city of Mosul, also faces the prospect of death by hanging or life in jail if convicted.
He, Chemical Ali and Saddam's half-brother Watban Ibrahim al-Hassan are the most high profile of the eight defendants in this case. Chemical Ali was sentenced to death for genocide last June, along with former defence minister Sultan Hashim al-Tai and former armed forces deputy chief of operations Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti.
The three were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity for overseeing a brutal military campaign against Kurdish civilians in 1988 known as the Anfal that is said to have left 180,000 people dead. Their executions have been delayed by legal wranglings.
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