ASIA/IRAQ - Russian Orthodox organization to Iraqi President: free Tareq Aziz

Friday, 24 October 2014

Moscow (Agenzia Fides) - The President of the Imperial Society of Palestine, Serghey Stapashin, sent a message to the newly-elected Iraqi President Fuad Masum to ask for the release of former Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq Tareq Aziz, former right-hand man of Saddam Hussein, in prison for 12 years. "This 78-year-old man - says Stapashin’s letter-appeal, sent to the Russians national media and consulted by Fides - is seriously ill. He has had a stroke and suffers from acute diabetes and problems with the heart and lungs". If the Iraqi authorities agree to show mercy "amid this unprecedented violence and the atrocities committed by Islamic State terrorists, it would help further promote the principles of humanism in Iraqi society and would send a clear and positive signal to the entire international community". Rumors about a possible imminent release of Tareq Aziz had already circulated in early September. Earlier, in 2010, the Criminal Court of Baghdad had issued a death sentence against him, recognizing him guilty of "crimes against humanity". At the beginning of 2013 his lawyers had made known his intention to appeal in writing to the Pope, to let people know that he preferred to be executed rather than endure imprisonment in pitiful conditions. Tareq Aziz, a native of Tal Kaif, in the Nineveh Plain, belongs to a Christian family of Chaldean tradition. The Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, founded in 1882 by Tsar Alexander III also to strengthen the presence of Tsarist Russia in the Middle East, was closed after the Revolution in 1917, but since 1992 it was again registered by the Russian authorities with its historic name. (GV) (Agenzia Fides 24/10/2014)


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