Free Republic

dubai • Iraqi former deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz wants to live in Rome after his release from jail, believing he will be welcomed in the Italian capital, an Arab newspaper reported yesterday. Aziz’s plans were revealed by his lawyer in Baghdad last week, the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al Awsat said. “I want to live in Rome. The Pope and Italian officials welcomed me,” Aziz said in answer to a question about his future hopes delivered via his lawyer. Aziz was the only Christian member of Saddam Hussein’s cabinet and frequently met Pope John Paul II and his close advisers,...

SCATTERED AMONG the loose papers and bound files unearthed last week at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in Baghdad was "letter no. 140/4/5," labeled "Confidential and Personal" and addressed to "The President's Office--Secretariat." The letter concerns George Galloway, a pro-Saddam member of the British Parliament, who founded a charity known as the Mariam Appeal, ostensibly to aid Iraqi children suffering under U.N. sanctions. The missive, from the Iraqi Intelligence Service, is a request that money be funneled directly to Galloway. It reads in part: His projects and future plans for the benefit of [Iraq] need financial support to become a motive...

In the hunt for Saddam Hussein's billions, investigators have identified five networks of more than 100 companies used to launder money skimmed from Iraqi oil sales. Saddam's gangster regime set up shell companies in Switzerland, Jordan, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg and Panama, according to investigators. Those company networks and their banking affiliations were used to enrich the former Iraqi strongman, his sons Uday and Qusay, and other family members. "Ultimately, the money was stolen from the Iraqi people," said Taylor Griffin, spokesman for the Treasury Department, which is heading the government's laundering probe along with U.S. Customs, the Secret Service and various...

Saddam's $2m offer to WMD inspector By Francis Harris in Washington (Filed: 12/03/2005) Saddam Hussein's regime offered a $2 million (£1.4 million) bribe to the United Nations' chief weapons inspector to doctor his reports on the search for weapons of mass destruction

BAGHDAD, June 30 (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein, who brutalised Iraqis for decades, said good morning and sought to ask some questions when the United States handed him over to Iraqi justice on Wednesday, a witness said. Saddam, who was captured hiding near his hometown of Tikrit in December, looked in good health as he appeared before an Iraqi judge in the first legal step towards a trial for the cruelties he inflicted during his 35 years of power. "Saddam said good morning and asked if he could ask some questions," Salem Chalabi, a lawyer leading the work of a tribunal...

Just heard on NBC-News that Tariq Aziz has told interrogators that Saddam Hussain believed right up to the last moment that the US would not invade Iraq, due to "international pressure".Translated, that means, as many americans believed all along, that France and Germany (the main voices of 'international pressure') were, in effect, responsible for creating the neccessity for a hot war.It was their action, in opposition to the UN mandate and US pressure, that threw a lifeline of hope to Saddam, to which he hung on to the last, instead of taking the more reasonable approach of giving up power...

BAGHDAD, April 17 (AFP) - Tareq Aziz, a member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle and now one of the world's most wanted men, is not expected to make it to Easter Day mass at Baghdad's Church of the Virgin Mary this year. With Easter weekend services beginning Thursday, Father Boutros Haddad in the Al-Karrada parish of the capital indicated that the country's most prominent Christian would be missed on Sunday. "(Aziz) did not come to mass often, but his wife and his son were here every Sunday," Haddad told AFP in fluent French, learned at the seminary in Mosul in...

Senior Iraqi officers have scattered across the Middle East after fleeing Baghdad as the assault on the city began, according to some senior Iraqis in London who have kept close links with key figures within the country. All of them have false passports and could try to later hide in countries like Pakistan or Malaysia or Indonesia, said Ali Haitham Rashid Wihaib, who was Saddam Hussain's former head of protocol. He added that the Syrian authorities were keeping some of their "embarrassing guests" including generals and ministers hidden because of the US pressure. He, claimed in a daily, that Saddam...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq poured scorn on the United States on Sept. 11, saying it was using last year's attacks -- hailed as the "punishment of God" by one Baghdad magazine -- as a pretext to try to crush its old foe in the Middle East. The government newspaper al-Jumhouriya said President Bush's "arrogant and imperialist" administration wanted to rule the world by force. "A year after the September 11 events, the American administration has failed to review its policy of aggression and blackmail," it said in a front-page editorial. "Between the two Septembers, the American evil administration is...

GOTTA SEE THIS - War for Enduring Freedom 8/23/02 Operation Northern Watch, Baghdad, Iraq, Tahir Haboush, Sabri al-Banna, Abu Nidal, 'baby milk factory', Qurna, Berlin, Iraqi embassy ============= Over Iraq =================== Over Iraq, in Operation Northern Watch, at this moment north of the 36th parallel, F-16CJs are flown by heroes of the 77th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron. ============= Baghdad Security and Intelligence =============== In Baghdad, Iraq, showing the end of terrorist Abu Nidal, Iraqi intelligence officer Tahir Haboush holds up what he claims is Nidal's forged Yemeni passport, and several photos of weapons and the dead perp. Haboush claimed Abu Nidal...

Iraq's Aziz Says U.S. Attack Would Fail Tue Aug 20, 9:50 PM ET NEW YORK (Reuters) - Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz dared President Bush ( news - web sites) on Tuesday to try to oust Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites), saying any attempt to do so would end in failure. Aziz, in an interview on CBS Evening News, said Iraq had not been intimidated by Bush's commitment to changing the Baghdad government and widespread expectations that Washington was planning a military strike. "We are defending our independence, we are defending our integrity, we are defending our...