Posted on 04/02/2007 6:25:30 AM PDT by Int
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, the last time in mid-February 2003, barely a month before the beginning of the US-led invasion of Iraq.
The 71 year old surrendered to US troops in Iraq in April 2003. Since then he has been imprisoned at Camp Cropper, a holding centre near Baghdad international airport.
Aziz is suspected of involvement in the execution of dozens of members of the former Baath regime in 1979 and mass killings of Shi’ites and Kurds in 1991, but his legal representatives say he has yet to be charged.
Earlier this month, he was brought to the High Tribunal to give evidence against defendants in the Anfal trial of Saddam aides charged with involvement in the killing of up to 182,000 Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s.
Aziz’s lawyer, Issam Al-Ghazawi, said he expected his client to be released within two to three months when the Anfal trial was completed and he was no longer needed to testify.
Saddam was executed last December after being found guilty of crimes against humanity in a previous trial, but the Kurdish genocide trial is continuing with several of his former allies still in the dock.
Then Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was a key US-ally in the invasion of Iraq despite popular opposition, but his centre-left successor Romano Prodi has since withdrawn Italian troops from the country.
Meanwhile, a policemen suspected of killing 70 Sunni Arabs in Iraq this week have been rearrested after being freed to mourn their relatives killed in a truck bombing in the same town, police said yesterday.
On Tuesday, gunmen believed to off-duty policemen, went on a rampage killing Sunni Arabs in the town of Tal Afar after a truck bomb killed 85 people in a Shiite district.
A group of policemen was briefly detained but later released to mourn the deaths of their relatives from the suicide truck bombing.
With Christians like him, who needs muslims?
It is getting to the point I would rather look at pics of Helen then this bitch. She is so dangerous it is not even funny.
In the Duelfer Report, on the Food-for-Oil scandal, we find out interesting facts about one Father Jean-Marie Benjamin, listed as one of Saddam's oil beneficiaries.
No ordinary “seminarian,” Benjamin was the United Nations “Director of Special Events” when he “got the call” in the late 80s. Studied in Rome, where he came to the attention (or caught the eye) of then-Cardinal Secretary of State, Agostino Casaroli. After ordination - no parish work for a talent like Benjamin! - he was traveling the world with Casaroli and Casaroli’s successor Sodano (until recently the Secretary of State - and a fierce anti-American).
Dear Father Benjamin has a popular anti-George Bush CD (Buon Giorno, Signor Presidente) and a puff-piece video “documentary” on Iraq and the sufferings caused by the sanctions.
Benjamin's crowning achievement was arranging the infamous meeting between Tariq Azziz and Pope John Paul II just before the Iraq War began. At this meeting, Azziz was accompanied by someone identified (at least in the Boston Herald’s picture) only as “Monsignore Cappucci” of the Vatican. This is Melkite-rite (one of the Catholic Church’s Eastern Rites, the Melkites, largely Lebanese with some Palestinians) Archbishop Hilarion Cappucci (sometimes Capucci), who was arrested by the Israelis in 1973 (I think) when he was found to be gun-running for the PLO. They found the weapons concealed in the door panels of his church-limo!!!! He was sentenced to hard labor, but Paul VI intervened and he was released to the custody of the Holy See, who promised Israel that Cappucci would spend the rest of his life in a monastery in Brazil. In no time, he was back in the Mideast, referring to the Palestinian suicide bombers as “martyrs” (as did the late Chaldean Rite Catholic Patriarch of Baghdad, Archbishop Raphael I Bidawid, Tariq Azziz’s bishop) - this scoundrel accompanies Azziz to see the Pope and then to Assisi, all engineered by Father Benjamin!
In Duelfer’s report, Father Benjamin is listed as having received 4.5 million barrels of oil. For a pre-Duelfer article on this see this article!
So for the embarrassment to conservative American Catholics everywhere of one of the Butcher of Baghdad's right hand men coming to stay close to the Vatican, we have the FORMER clowns at the Secretariat of State - with their little go-for "priest" to thank!
Why not Berkely?
Azis would have been right at home during the Inquisition, torturing those who disgreed with the Pope.
not charged, about to go live in rome, despite obvious involvement = full cooperation with the US.
"BTW....if Sadam had taken the deal 4 years ago, and just left Iraq, he could be living the good life in Florida as we speak. But alas, and fortunately for us, he choose war, and got his butt hanged for his decision."
the personality type which seems to end up in control of despotic governments usually doesn't walk away no matter how overwhelming the odds against them.
to the gallows with this little rat
ROFL from that angle the resemblence is uncanny! This is my laugh for the day, thank you!
What, exactly, did he tell us?
Or the Ivy League? The start of a whole new career!
Getting killed just to hold onto the control of people's lives does not compute in my brain...yet there are several thousand people in the world at any given time who would risk being hanged just to keep their place a little longer.
Its nuts.
An Iraqi told me that Tareq got spit on in court last week.
What a comedown!
Actually the Christian right of asylum was extended even to murders. Of course, traditionally the person granted asylum had to live a monastic life within the confines of the church.
If Aziz wants to play by the old rules and live as a monk, fine. Let him live out his life in peace and repentence.
This is a switch! A stoolie who wants to go to Italy.
Perhaps he can get a job as CNN's foreign correspondent to Rome.
He sang for his supper. If the Italians will take him, they’re welcome to him.
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