“My father’s condition is worsening by the day”

An urgent call to help Tariq Aziz

"The Iraqi President Jamal Talabani recently spoke of the democracy that had been introduced in his country due to the US invasion of 2003. Some Iraq observers, who do not know Iraq and probably understand only little about democracy, have hastily confirmed this. For them, the decreases of bloody attacks and of the number of victims prove that the six-year occupation was worthwhile. However, dead people cannot react but their descendants can do and they do so. Twenty per cent of the Iraqi population have become refugees in their own country or live under the most incredible circumstances as tolerated but unwanted people in Syria, Jordan or in countries farther away. Among them is the family of the former deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz. They live scattered in Jordan and in Yemen and fear for their patriarch. Tariq Aziz has been seriously ill for a long time. Together with other political prisoners like the former Oil Minister, Dr. Amer Rashid and the Minister of Trade, Dr. Mohamed Medhi Saleh he is kept imprisoned at the US Camp Cropper in the outskirts of Bagdad. They have already spent there many years, often without accusation, without effective defense, without support in the sense of the Geneva Convention, without effective medical supply. International legal obligations do not signify anything in this context. The letter of Ziad Aziz, the oldest son of Tariq Aziz, to a concerned friend abroad makes clear, what the situation of political prisoners and their democratic fundamental rights in Bagdad is like."

Hans C. von Sponeck, UN Coordinator for Iraq (1998-2000)

Dear Sir,
In regard to your reply to our letter, it is my sad duty to inform you that you information are inaccurate or perhaps you are ill-informed on the matter.
My father, Mr. Tariq Aziz, has been held in U.S. custody in camp cropper for more than 6 years till this date and he suffers several life threatening diseases that require constant, highly sophisticated and immediate medical attention.
Camp Cropper, as you may well know, is basically a holding facility, in which high-value prisoners are being held in the custody of the U.S. forces. It is highly inaccurate to say that a holding facility, i.e. a prison, of any kind can provide “state of the art medical car” for any sort of condition or disease.
For example, my father fell during taking a shower 2 years ago, and fearing that he had suffered a stroke, the moved him to the air base in Balad (200 kilometers north of Baghdad) to perform a C.T. scan.
I am sure, even to a layman, that it is obvious that if someone had suffered a stroke, he or she cannot wait to be transported into a hospital 200 kilometers away. My father, a 72 year-old man, is in danger of having a stroke plus having several other diseases.
The medical care you are referring to is nothing but a doctor who visits the detainees every once in a while and performs basic check-up, like testing blood sugar, measuring blood pressure, and administering drugs, which brings me to the fact that my father has lost a lot of weight during his imprisonment, which means that the dose of the drugs he is taking should be changed regularly due to his weight change, which never happened.
As for legal and family visitation rights, the U.S. forces have asked the all the lawyers, my father’s lawyer among them, to leave the green zone in which they were residing, which made it virtually impossible for the lawyer to visit my father or even to attend the trial for fear on his life. As you may well know that the lives of the lawyers who defend high ranking officials like my father are constantly threatened, and indeed many of them were killed, some even in their offices, under U.S. protection, so I would like you to try and imagine the situation now without U.S. protection and outside the safety of the green zone.
As for the trial, I invite you to watch the proceedings as it is shown on Iraqi TV.  I invite you to watch this mockery of justice where impartial judges show and admit unequivocally that they have grudges against the defendants.  In any civilized and truly democratic country, and in any court that abides itself to the law, these judges would be immediately removed from the case and disciplined before an ethics committee.  Add to that frequent verbal and physical abuse and denying the defendants their legal right of challenging their accuser and the evidence presented to the court.
I apologize for the lengthy reply but we are facing desperate times, and my father’s condition is worsening by the day.
Ziad Aziz