Dredging up dark history
In perhaps the smartest testimony yet, today Saddam Hussein’s former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz dredged up a history Iraq’s current government would prefer to keep quiet.
Speaking in the witness dock wearing pajamas (a clear attempt by Aziz to show that he is as sick as his lawyers and family claim), Aziz suggested the trial of Saddam and his co-defendants is little more than victor’s justice. Without naming Iraq’s leading Dawa Party (Iraq’s new Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the former prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari are both long-time, senior Dawa Party leaders), Aziz referred to terrorist attacks blamed on the Dawa Party in the early 1980s.
Dawa Party’s past
The Dawa Party, now relatively pro-American with leaders who have denounced past attacks, has long been accused of acting at Iran’s behest to attack Iraqi officials and western interests during the Iran-Iraq war.
Today, Aziz told the court how he survived a 1980 grenade attack at Baghdad’s Mustansariya University. At the time, the Dawa Party and its Iranian backers were held responsible. (In response to the attack, Saddam passed a law in March 1980 making membership to the Dawa Party punishable by death.)
"I still have shrapnel from those grenades thrown at Mustansariya University in my back," Aziz told the court. "Why aren’t the people who carried out that attack which also killed tens of students on trial? Isn’t that mass killing? Some of the people involved in the attack are now members of the government."
The Dawa Party was also blamed for the December 1983 bombings in Kuwait of the U.S. and French embassies, along with a power station, a flight control tower and the compound of a U.S. defense contractor. (The Dawa Party now says the attacks were carried out by "rogue" members working with Iranian Pasdaran forces.)
Assassination attempt at center of trial
But perhaps the Dawa Party’s most famous attack was the 1982 assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein that is at the center of this trial. It was Dawa Party gunmen who opened fire on Saddam’s convoy in the village of Dujail.
Saddam and his associates are charged with war crimes for launching a brutal crackdown against the village after the failed assassination, carrying out mass arrests, ordering the executions of 148 men and boys and vengefully destroying farmland.
Saddam's government maintains it was responding to an act of war supported by then enemy Iran. (Villagers in Dujail told me earlier this year that the gunmen who shot Saddam and survived fled to Iran, but have recently returned to their village where they are considered heroes.)
All sides have a dark past
I know Tariq Aziz. He is a sharp man. During the 2003 bombing campaign, I was the last reporter to interview him while he was still in power.
At the time, he seemed surprised the American troops were actually invading Iraq. He told me he thought the U.S. was just saber rattling.
Aziz is pragmatic and well-spoken. On the stand today, he wasn’t emotional. There were no aggressive outbursts like we have seen from Saddam and his half-brother Barzan. Instead, Aziz simply reminded the court that that all sides here have a dark history.
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