Saddam Hussein’s former spokesman Tariq Aziz dies in jail
“Diplomat who was Iraqi dictator’s mouthpiece has heart attack while on death row”
Tariq Aziz, the urbane, cigar-chomping Ba’athist who was Saddam Hussein’s spokesman to the wider world, has died in prison in Iraq, The Telegraph has reported.
Aziz, who was aged 79, passed away on Friday afternoon after suffering a heart attack on Thursday, Iraqi officials said. The former foreign minister had been on death row after being convicted of human rights abuses allegedly committed during Saddam’s three-decade long rule.
For more than two decades, Mr Aziz was Saddam’s chief envoy to the world, arguing the Iraqi dictator’s case during the diplomatic wranglings prior to both the 1991 and the 2003 Gulf Wars.
In contrast to his master’s brutal reputation, the English-speaking Aziz cultivated a refined, sophisticated image, fond of fine wine and good Havana cigars and never without the spectacles that marked him out as a 1960s era Baa’thist intellectual. He also stood out from the rest of Saddam’s inner circle by being a member of Iraq’s Christian minority, many of whom have now fled the country in the wake of the violence that erupted after the US-led invasion of 2003.
Aziz had been in custody since April 24 of that year, when he surrendered to US forces at his home in Baghdad. As a senior confidante to Saddam, he had been cast as the Eight of Spades in the “Deck of 55” most-wanted playing cards issued by US forces. However, he denied having any blood on his hands personally, and professed surprise when they continued to detain him rather than release him as he had expected.
When it was announced later that year that he would face a war crimes tribunal along with other Saddam henchmen, his family described as a vendetta against a man who had done his best to make peace between Iraq and the US.
Speaking that year, his daughter Zeinab told The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad: “He was just a spokesman for Saddam, and was trying to serve the country when it was in a very bad situation. If he had refused to do his job, he would have been killed like anybody else.
“Some of the others did horrible things to the Iraqi people and they should be put on trial. But all the world knows the difference between my father and them.”
At one point, Aziz even tried to enlist the Vatican’s help to get him freed, also gaining the backing of Monsignor Emmanuel Delly, the Patriarch of Baghdad and spiritual leader of the country’s 500,000-strong Chaldean branch of the Catholic Church.
However, his protests that he was a harmless functionary were never by critics of the regime. Ann Clwyd, Tony Blair’s special envoy on human rights to Iraq, said he bore responsibility for crimes such as gassing the Kurds and the taking of British hostages during the first Gulf war. And in 2010, an Iraqi court sentenced him to hang for charges relating to the murder and torture of members of Islamic parties opposed to Hussein’s leadership.
According to al-Jazeera, Aziz’s son, Ziad, expressed outrage that Iraqi officials had not informed him of his father’s death, and that he had instead found out through local media reports.