AMMAN (Reuters) - The lawyer of former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said on Thursday he expected his client to be released from jail without being put on trial. "I expect he will be set free soon, but not within days," attorney Badia Aref, who last saw Aziz on Tuesday during a visit to the U.S. run facility near Baghdad, told Reuters. Aziz is jailed along with ousted leader Saddam Hussein and other senior members of the Baath Party overthrown by U.S. forces in April 2003.
Aref said he had been getting more access to Aziz from U.S. authorities in the last few weeks, and that legal developments he was not able to disclose had made him expect Aziz would be released soon. "There are several legal elements that have emerged from the interrogations that have made me form an almost complete conviction that Aziz would be freed soon," Aref said. | If, and I do mean if, if true it means he cut a deal and will be testifying against Saddam at his trial. |
| Just as long as he's released, alone and without money, in Kurdistan ... |
No charges have yet been brought publicly against Aziz, who Aref said had been questioned by the U.S. military exhaustively in 152 sessions. | They've charged most of the rest of Sammy's gang, right? |
"Maybe the interrogations have come to an end. I don't know," Aref said. He added he had turned down a U.S. offer of accommodation near the detention center. "Because of the difficulties I am encountering in my movements to the detention center, the Americans offered me a place to sleep. I turned down the offer to be in a camp that is set up in country ... they are occupying," Aref said.
Aziz, who claims to be a Christian, was the face of Saddam's regime in foreign capitals and at the United Nations. Aref denied that Aziz, who was number 25 on the U.S. military's list of the 55 most-wanted Iraqis in the aftermath of the invasion, might turn a star witness for the prosecution and testify against Saddam.
So far, Saddam has been formally charged in only one case -- the killing of Shi'ite Muslims in the village of Dujail following a failed assassination attempt in 1982. A date for that trial is expected to be set soon.
Aziz was expected to get his first visit from his family in the next two days, only a week after the former senior official took a 10-minute phone call from them after waiting for over two years, Aref said. "In the next two days he will be visited by his family including his grandchildren and daughter," Aref said. Aref said Aziz, who is in his late sixties, was exhausted physically and was in ill health. "He is exhausted and would die in prison if he stays in captivity another year," Aref said. |
