Tariq Aziz and other Iraqi leaders must be put on trial or released
Mark Seddon in Jordan
Monday June 30, 2003
Tariq Aziz turned himself over to the American military shortly after the fall of the capital. He hadn't rated that highly on Donald Rumsfeld's pack of cards. The only high-level Christian in Saddam's regime, Aziz may have been one of its public faces, yet it was clear that he was an increasingly isolated figure in the Ba'athist hierarchy. But, unlike the renowned Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al Sahhaf - who was interrogated and then quickly released - Aziz is now apparently being held without trial in a broiling, dusty compound at what was once Saddam international airport. Along with many fellow Iraqi political leaders and others swept up in the American dragnet, there seem to be no plans either to put him on trial or to release him.
His wife Zureida and his two sons are staying in a hotel in Amman, Jordan. A few blocks away there is a lively trade in documents purporting to come from various former ministries in Baghdad. "My cousin went into one ministry and found some government stamps just lying there," a Jordanian tells me in the hotel lobby; forging documents which implicate people in the crimes of Saddam's regime "is an easy way to make some money", he says.
