Witnesses testify in trial of Tariq Aziz

BAGHDAD, May 22 (UPI) -- Witnesses testified in the trial of former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz as his lawyers waited in Jordan for permission to defend their client.

Aziz and seven co-defendants, including Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," faced the Iraqi High Tribunal on war crimes charges for the execution of 42 businessmen in 1992 who protested rising food prices in the wake of U.N. sanctions on the former regime. The Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein said the men were inflating food prices to exploit the economic impact of the sanctions.

Jassib Saber Dhamin told the court how Iraqi police raided his store in the Sadr City district of Baghdad, taking his brother when they learned Dhamin was missing a leg, The Independent said Thursday.

"The next day, I heard (my brother) was executed, and we were prevented from holding a funeral," Dhamin said.

The prosecution told the court Aziz and his co-defendants were responsible for the deaths because they were all members of the Revolutionary Command Council, the final authority of Iraqi affairs prior to 2003.

Aziz, the only Christian in the Sunni-led Saddam regime, said the tribunal was a charade perpetrated by the current Shiite government.

"The people who are ruling Iraq now are the same ones who tried to kill me in 1980," he said. Aziz claims members of the Islamic Dawa Party, the party of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, tried to assassinate him with a grenade attack.

Lawyers for Aziz remain in Jordan because the Iraqi government issued arrest warrants stemming from the trial of Majid in 2006.