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Badi Aref, counsel to Tariq Aziz, Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq in the era of former President Saddam Hussein, siad that the American President George Bush had intervened to release Aziz..

UNITED NATIONS -- In a wide-ranging compendium on Saddam Hussein's secret weapons programs, the U.N. Monitoring, Observation, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) reveals that in late 1989, Saddam's military launched a modified Scud missile that could have carried a nuclear warhead. In a document released on Thursday, UNMOVIC states . . . Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, repeatedly waved off Western concerns about the missile program. Now, it has become clear that such concerns were justified . . .

dubai • Iraqi former deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz wants to live in Rome after his release from jail, believing he will be welcomed in the Italian capital, an Arab newspaper reported yesterday. Aziz’s plans were revealed by his lawyer in Baghdad last week, the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al Awsat said. “I want to live in Rome. The Pope and Italian officials welcomed me,” Aziz said in answer to a question about his future hopes delivered via his lawyer. Aziz was the only Christian member of Saddam Hussein’s cabinet and frequently met Pope John Paul II and his close advisers,...

Saddam lieutenant pleads to Pope for mercy By Malcolm Moore in Rome, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:02am GMT 21/01/2007 Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister of Iraq, has thrown himself on the mercy of the Pope in an attempt to secure his release from US custody. Tariq Aziz's letter to the Pope: Aziz faces a possible death penalty after being charged on Friday with ordering the deaths of tens of thousands of Shia Muslims who rebelled in 1991. Last week he sent a handwritten plea to the Vatican, asking Pope Benedict XVI to act as a guarantor for him...

SCATTERED AMONG the loose papers and bound files unearthed last week at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in Baghdad was "letter no. 140/4/5," labeled "Confidential and Personal" and addressed to "The President's Office--Secretariat." The letter concerns George Galloway, a pro-Saddam member of the British Parliament, who founded a charity known as the Mariam Appeal, ostensibly to aid Iraqi children suffering under U.N. sanctions. The missive, from the Iraqi Intelligence Service, is a request that money be funneled directly to Galloway. It reads in part: His projects and future plans for the benefit of [Iraq] need financial support to become a motive...

In the hunt for Saddam Hussein's billions, investigators have identified five networks of more than 100 companies used to launder money skimmed from Iraqi oil sales. Saddam's gangster regime set up shell companies in Switzerland, Jordan, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg and Panama, according to investigators. Those company networks and their banking affiliations were used to enrich the former Iraqi strongman, his sons Uday and Qusay, and other family members. "Ultimately, the money was stolen from the Iraqi people," said Taylor Griffin, spokesman for the Treasury Department, which is heading the government's laundering probe along with U.S. Customs, the Secret Service and various...

Saddam Henchman Tariq Aziz Crying the Blues to U.S. Supreme Court By Jim Kouri, CPP, 7/25/2006 8:13:30 PM Former Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz has retained a U.S. attorney, Giovanni Di Stefano, who has made an application to the United States Supreme Court and stated that he "places the US on notice of a Habeas Corpus Application to the United States Supreme Court." A Writ of Habeas Corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so that the petitioner's case may be heard. Di Stefano said the question presented to...

ALARM - Tarek Aziz, witness of defense in the lawsuit of Saddam BAGHDAD - the former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarek Aziz was quoted like witness of defense in the lawsuit of deposed president Saddam Hussein, at the time of the 28th audience Wednesday of the High Iraqi penal court, according to a correspondent of AFP.

BRITISH diplomats in Baghdad have asked Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s former deputy prime minister, to help an investigation into allegations that George Galloway was given cash by Saddam Hussein under the Oil-for-Food programme.The diplomats made the secret approach through Mr Aziz’s lawyer this week on behalf of Parliament’s so-called “sleaze buster”. The lawyer, Badie Izzat Arief, claimed that they offered to try and secure Mr Aziz immunity from prosecution on any charges arising from the Oil-for-Food scandal. Embassy officials want to meet Mr Aziz, 70, in the US-run detention centre where he is held with other top members of Saddam’s regime...

Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf ('Baghdad Bob') THEN ...Al-Sahaf’s daily press briefings in the lead-up to the war and in its first weeks led to him being nicknamed Baghdad Bob or Comical Ali (an allusion to “Chemical Ali,” the nickname of former Iraqi defense minister Ali Hassan al-Majid.) He gained a considerable cult following, with several Web sites devoted to his outrageous claims...as coalition troops stormed the capital, al-Sahaf declared, "The infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad."... NOW On 25 June 2003, the London newspaper The Daily Mirror reported that al-Sahaf had been captured by coalition...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein's fear of internal rebellion led him to distrust his military commanders even after U.S. forces began their invasion in 2003, crippling the country's defenses, the New York Times reported in Sunday editions. Citing a classified U.S. military report as well other documents and interviews, the Times also said that top Iraqi commanders were shocked when Saddam told them three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction. Prepared nearly a year ago, the classified military report shows that Saddam discounted the possibility of a full-scale American invasion, the Times said....

Posterboard is up on screen showing translations of what Saddam and Tariq Aziz said on the tapes released this weekend at the Intelligence Summit. It sounds like former UN inspector Tierney is the one reading the translations.

Tonight on the Jonathon Batchelor Show on ABC the guest was John Loftis. He claims to have a CD of over 12 hours of tape recorded conversations from 1988 to 2002 of Saddam Hussein, Tariz Aziz and 30 to 40 other Iraqi leaders talking about WMDs, how they hid them from the UN and a whole host of other tidbits. Loftis said the CD has been validated by the NSA as genuine. He would not go into specifics, only that he called it the BIGGEST STORY OF THE YEAR and will release it on February 18th at the Intelligence Forum...

Tarek Aziz "fails" and will not live more than one month - the former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarek Aziz, held by the American army, "fails" and will not live more than one month because of a "cerebral embolism and cardiac diseases", affirms its lawyer in public statements Thursday by Arab daily newspaper Al-Hayat. According to Me Badie Arif Ezzat, Tarek Aziz is held in a room "reserved for the dogs". Tarek Aziz "fails and I do not expect that it lives more than one month" because of the continuations of a "cerebral embolism and diseases cardiac", it declared....

Nigergate: The shadow of the French inspector After yesterday’s posting, a close look at Ambassador Wilson, today’s the turn of Mr Jacques Baute. The following article raises some incredible questions and reveals some amazing facts. Mr Baute, a Frenchman, seemed to know all about the the Niger forgeries and kept very quiet about them. The result: the Bush administration was ridiculed. The day after Baute’s organisation, the International Atomic Energy Agency, declared the documents to be forgeries the French Government made a startling announcement..... The Bush administration was decieved by it’s presumed allies and the blame was placed on the...

One of France's most distinguished diplomats has confessed to an investigating judge that he accepted oil allocations from Saddam Hussein, it emerged yesterday. Jean-Bernard Mérimée is thought to be the first senior figure to admit his role in the oil-for-food scandal, a United Nations humanitarian aid scheme hijacked by Saddam to buy influence. The Frenchman, who holds the title "ambassador for life", told authorities that he regretted taking payments amounting to $156,000 (then worth about £108,000) in 2002. The money was used to renovate a holiday home he owned in southern Morocco. At the time, Mr Mérimée was a special...

Galloway to face US critics on home turf GERRI PEEV POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT Key points • Justice Department to make case against Galloway's alleged oil profitting • Claim documents show money transferred to Galloway's ex-wife • Lawyer of former Iraqi foreign minister is said to deny truth of allegations Key quote "...Mr Galloway will be brought to justice" - Senator Norm Coleman Story in full GEORGE Galloway will mount a crusade to clear his name in the United States after American prosecutors confirmed they were considering a criminal investigation into allegations over his role in Iraq's oil-for-food scandal. Yesterday the US...

By JAMES RISEN WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 — As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal. Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct an independent search. They also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the...

Wife and daughters of Tariq Aziz in tears as they tell our correspondent of their first prison reunion IT WAS their first meeting in 28 months, and the family of Tariq Aziz, 69, wept as they described their reunion in an American prison outside Baghdad this week with the man who served for more than a decade as the public face of Saddam Hussein’s regime. “He looked like he had turned 80,” his wife, Violette, told The Times. “He was frail and too tired to walk, even inside the small meeting room. He had to lean against his American military...

Baghdad – The Iraqi government refused to comment on the news of the possibility of releasing the former Prime Minister of the former regime Tareq Aziz and Baathi leaders under arrest. News media have noted that the Americans have prepared an 'initiative' to release Tareq aziz and a number of Baathi leaders, with the knowledge of the President Jalal Talebani, Masud Barzani, president of Kurdistan region, and the head of the former government Iyad Allawi. Ali Al Adhadh, distinguished leader in the Supreme Council of the Islamic revolution said, "The American objective of such a bargain is to create a...