|
DEATH PENALTY. PANNELLA- DON'T FORGET TAREK AZIZ
October 11, 2008: Radical leader Marco Pannella held a press conference with lawyer Mario Lana at Montecitorio regarding Tarek Aziz, Saddam Hussein's ex Foreign Affairs Minister. Aziz has been detained in Iraq since 2003 and is at risk of being sentenced to death. Lana met the ex Iraqi Foreign Affairs Minister many times and collaborated with him in Iraq.
'Tareq Aziz has only known the charges against him since 2007: being complicit in the so called Friday Mosque attack and the massacre of Iraqi merchants,' Lana explained.
But what worries the lawyer is a new charge that will cause a third trial. 'Last weekend a new charge of complicity in the deportation of the Kurdish population was formulated. It is a very serious charge that, if confirmed, could result in a death sentence,' Lana said.
'They are war crimes or crimes against humanity, which according to past experience should be judged by an international or at least mixed tribunal. Aziz has been denied this,' Lana emphasised.
It is in this context that 'Hands Off Cain' commits to its campaign for Aziz. Pannella said the campaign to prevent Saddam Hussein's execution was 'a gamble but not a failure,' and now he is fighting against time to save Tarek Aziz's life.
'We've already had a victory with the intervention of Lana and the mobilisation of public support. We have remembered a man that everyone left to die,' Pannella observed.
Aziz has been held since 2003 in Camp Propper, an Iraqi jail under American control. (Sources: ANSA, 11/10/2008)
|
