The public face of Saddam's regime faces deaths trial

Published on Tuesday 29 April 2008 22:52

TARIQ Aziz, the suave public face of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, returned to the limelight he once revelled in as he went on trial yesterday over the deaths of 42 merchants in 1992.

For two decades as Saddam's top diplomat, Aziz had been instantly recognisable with his Cuban cigars, glasses and bushy moustache – all of which gave him an uncanny resemblance to Groucho Marx.

But frail, white-haired and leaning on a walking stick, the 72-year-old looked a pale shadow of his swaggering former self yesterday as he faced the same judge who condemned Saddam to the gallows in 2006.

On trial with Aziz are seven other members of Saddam's inner circle, including two half-brothers and the dictator's notorious cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majeed, nicknamed "Chemical Ali" for gassing thousands of Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s.

Majeed was sentenced to death for that crime last June, but his execution has been held up by legal arguments. He did not attend yesterday's brief hearing because of ill-health.

Aziz, as a Christian in a mainly Sunni Muslim government, was not considered a member of Saddam's innermost circle of clan members from the town of Tikrit.

He had stoutly defended Saddam's policies on the world stage, but surrendered without a whimper to US forces two weeks after the collapse of his master's regime in 2003.

Aziz's family says that after five years at a US-run detention centre he is in very poor health with high blood pressure and heart problems.

They insist he played no role in the merchants' deaths and that as a diplomat with no decision-making powers he was entirely innocent of any of the regime's bloody excesses.

They argue that Aziz, the son of a waiter, had achieved prominence because of his negotiating skills and fluency in English – he had a degree in English literature.

"Keeping him in prison for five years has embarrassed the government. There is international pressure and so they had to present him as a defendant," his lawyer, Badie Aref, declared. "Legally, there's no case, but we can't predict how politics will influence it."

But Aziz's accusers believe his avuncular appearance was deceptive and that as a member of Saddam's ruling Revolutionary Command Council he was a sinister figure complicit in some crimes and an apologist for many others.