U.S. Puppet Regime in Baghdad Builds Former Dep. Prime Minister Tariq Aziz' Sentence to 22 years in Prison

Editor's Comment

Tariq Aziz, former Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq.

Frankly, we missed this news item which was first reported on August 3, 2009. Tariq Aziz, former deputy prime minister of Iraq at the time of the U.S. invasion in 2003 has been sentenced to 7 additional years in prison by Mahmoud Salih, a judge in the U.S. puppet government in Baghdad. This sentence is added to an earlier sentence of 15 years which was also based on trumped up charges by the U.S. The first sentence was pronounced by Abdel-Rahman, the judge who sentenced President Saddam Hussein to death by hanging. Rahman ran into hiding in Britain where he was given asylum immediately after sentencing President Hussein to death. He then briefly returned to Iraq to sentence Tariq Aziz. Mr. Aziz's combined prison sentences of 22 years amount to a life sentence for him, given his age and health problems.

The U.S. occupiers have buried Tariq Aziz in one of their filthy prisons in his own land but they will never bury our memories of him standing with integrity before the U.N. or of his dignified and brilliant comments to media shills in the U.S. when they interviewed him during the no fly zones over Iraq and the U.S. sanctions under Bill Clinton that killed nearly a million Iraqi children. Tariq Aziz was and is an honorable man who fell victim of the U.S./Zionist killing machine, like millions of his fellow citizens. Read an Axis of Logic special report on Tariq Aziz.

Iraq's Tariq Aziz sentenced 7 years in prison in Kurds case Xinhua News, August 3, 2009

Tariq Aziz, one of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's top lieutenants, was sentenced to seven years in prison for his role in the ethnic forced displacement of Kurds in northern Iraq during Saddam's rule, a source from the Iraqi criminal court said Monday.

Tariq Aziz, former deputy prime minister under Saddam, and three other co-defendants received on Sunday seven-year sentences, they are Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," former Interior Minister Sadoun Shakir and former regional official Mizban Khuder Hadi, said the source from the Iraqi High Criminal Court.

"Because you committed the crime of forced displacement against the Kurds, the court has decided to sentence you to seven years in prison," the source quoted Judge Mahmoud Salih as saying to Aziz.

Three other former regime aides received six years in prison, while four were found not guilty, the source added.

Aziz, the only Christian in Saddam's Muslim regime, was known as a fierce American critic after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent 1990-1991 Gulf War.

The new conviction for Aziz came more than four months after he was sentenced to 15 years in prison in a separate case due to crimes against humanity in the 1992 execution of Iraqi merchants.

In March, the Iraqi High Criminal Court acquitted Aziz in a separate case over crackdown on Shiite protestors that followed the 1999 assassination of Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, father of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Source: Xinhua