Iraqi President Refuses To Sign Off On Tariq Aziz’s Death Sentence
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, of Kurdish origin, said on Wednesday he would not sign the death sentence of former collaborator of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Tariq Aziz, who was sentenced to death by hanging.
It would appear that by this statement the president opens the stage for a debate over the fate of the former Iraqi minister and country’s representative to the United Nations.
The decision to prosecute and condemn former supporters of the Saddam regime is very controversial among Iraqis, many of them seeing it as a mere payback, since most of the members of the Shiite majority of the country, who suffered under the Sunni ousted regime, could turn justice into a vendetta process against former dignitaries.
Tariq Aziz was not a member of any Muslim denomination; he was a Christian and had to change his name in order to make it to the top leadership of the country.
Though he was one of the most moderate people of the regime and its interface to the international community, Tariq Aziz was convicted for his role in the banning of the Shiite parties in Iraq under Saddam regime.
The Vatican asked for the sentence not to be carried out and promised to intervene diplomatically on Aziz’s behalf.
Talabani gave an interview to France 24 TV and said that there are reasons why he cannot approve the execution of Tariq Aziz.
He listed three of them to motivate his decision: the fact that he is a Socialist, thereby he does not approve of executions; the fact that he feels compassion for Aziz, because Aziz is a Christian; Aziz is an elderly man, over 70 years old, which seems the strongest reason why the president announced he would never sign that sentence.
Talabani also refused to sign off on the death sentence of other members of the former regime, including Sultan Hashim al-Tai, former defense minister of Saddam regime.
It is not clear whether the presidential refuse to sign this sentence will automatically allow Aziz to live, though the defense minister explained the president had no veto on the matter.
There are constitutional provisions that say that if the president refuses to sign off on the death sentences, they can still be carried out through the parliament.
Tariq Aziz was sentenced to death by hanging on October 26, at the end of a process led by people of the Shiite denomination, who judged his role in the persecution of the Shiite religious parties.
Apart from this sentence, he was tried in other two cases, receiving a combined sentence of 22 years in prison.
The members of his family protested the sentence against him, saying that it was politically motivated and biased by the desire of revenge.
Tariq Aziz surrendered to the American troops after the beginning of the war in 2003, and he spent most of the last years in custody, where he already went throug a heart attack.
