Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's deputy prime minister, recognized worldwide as the international spokesman for Saddam, has been sentenced to death by hanging by the Supreme Court in Baghdad. Four other former members of Saddam's regime also received death sentences.
Aziz is a member of Iraq's Christian minority. He was the only one in the former Sunni and secular Ba'athist inner circle. Aziz suffered a stroke in January. He is 74 years old and has been serving time in jail for other crimes but had not been sentenced to death. Family members say that he had predicted he would die in jail.
He became well known during the first Gulf War and often appeared in the news speaking perfect English and defending the Iraqi Government's military action against Kuwait.
Tariq Aziz was transferred, along with 28 other officials from Saddam Hussein’s regime, to the Iraqi government in early July of this year. He had surrendered to the Americans in April of 2003.
There are a number of reports on this ruling. It is clearly motivated by revenge. The following quote and others below are from Asia Times in a piece written by Pepe Escobar.
Anyone who does not see this as a political verdict is a believer in democracy by "shock and awe". In this case, revenge is served to current Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his Shi'ite Da'wa party, which had been persecuted under Saddam's Sunni regime. Everyone else loses badly - because Aziz is arguably the only person on Earth who could tell the real story, bit by juicy bit, about the rolling, decades-long American dirty game in Iraq.
It would be interesting to hear the stories Aziz could tell. The non-existing WMDs, the war we encouraged Saddam to wage against Iran while secretly aiding the Iranian side. Escobar writes:
His is the ultimate political best-seller we'll never be able to read - telling for instance how the US, the United Kingdom and the Saudis shelled out over $60 billion for Iraq to go to war with Iran during the 1980s; what was really discussed between Saddam, himself and former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Baghdad when they met in 1983; how every Western politician paid homage at the court of Saddam - the man who would get rid of those demented ayatollahs; how Saddam beat the late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's human waves of martyrs by spraying them with Western-supplied chemical weapons...
Escobar notes that an accurate account of history might well show that Bush and Blair in bringing "shock and awe" to Iraq, directly and indirectly, "killed more Iraqi civilians than Saddam ever did". Yet they will live out their lives in comfort and glory.
As for the frail Aziz, as Escobar explains,
he is the only one left with a real breathtaking story to tell. And as the proverbial man who knows too much, he had to be taken out.