17 July 2008 :

Radical-PD Parliamentarians Matteo Mecacci and Marco Perduca wrote a letter to the Presidents of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Chamber and the Senate asking them to start all the practical necessities for sending a delegation to Iraq “with the utmost urgency.” The purpose of the delegation is to visit Tareq Aziz, the ex-vice president of Saddam Hussein, who is currently jailed and on trial for crimes committed during the 80s.
The Radicals’ request was motivated by the obscure circumstances in which the legal action against Aziz is being carried out.
“Not only is it not clear if the possibility of having a defence team has been allowed, and if this could be assisted by non-Iraqi lawyers, who are protesting at the moment, but we have reason to believe that his death sentence is already written and the execution scheduled for the first of August.”
To stop the death sentence and execution of Tareq Aziz, Marco Pannella has been on a hunger strike for eight days. The initiative has already been joined by almost 300 Italian and European Parliamentarians. Mecacci and Perduca wrote that it was “perfectly in line with how much the Chamber has done in the last legislature in favour of the resolution for the Universal Moratorium on the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly.”
“Including Iraq in the affirmation of the right to life is as necessary as it is urgent”, the two Radicals concluded.