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Baath Party detainees placed in Iraqi custody

U.S. Army soldiers leave Iraq on a C-17 transport aircraft Tuesday after a nine month tour of duty. (Associated Press)
U.S. Army soldiers leave Iraq on a C-17 transport aircraft Tuesday after a nine month tour of duty. (Associated Press)
Ned Parker And Nadeem Hamid Los Angeles Times

BAGHDAD – The United States has handed over 29 members of Saddam Hussein’s government to Iraqi custody in recent weeks, including Tariq Aziz, the urbane, cigar-chomping official who served as the regime’s global spokesman, Iraqi officials and Aziz’s relatives said Wednesday.

The U.S. military confirmed that it had transferred 26 former regime officials on Monday and three others last month. It added that it continued to hold eight high-ranking members of Hussein’s government and his ruling Baath Party.

Both Aziz’s son and the Iraqi government said the onetime foreign minister and deputy prime minister has been held in an Iraqi prison since Monday. For years, Aziz has been suffering from poor health, including heart disease and diabetes.

His son, Ziad Aziz, said his father called him on Wednesday and complained that he was now being held in a tiny cell and deprived of his medications. His son said the former official described the situation as “hard circumstances.”

“He hasn’t taken his medicine in three days. There’s no place to sit. He hasn’t seen a doctor,” his son said. He added that his father has been in a wheelchair in recent months after suffering a stroke.

Iraq’s deputy justice minister, Busho Ibrahim, denied that Aziz or any other detainees were being mistreated.

Tariq Aziz first gained notoriety in 1990 after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. He continued to promote Hussein’s views to the international community in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Fluent in English and well educated, the former foreign minister came to symbolize Hussein’s regime in the West. He was Iraq’s most senior Christian official.

In March 2009, an Iraqi court sentenced him to 15 years in prison for his role in the 1992 execution of 42 merchants who had been accused of price-fixing. He received an additional seven-year sentence in August 2009 for the displacement of Kurds in 1980.

In addition to the 29 detainees handed over by the Americans, Ibrahim said 26 other high-ranking former regime officials had been transferred to Iraqi custody by the Americans about eight months ago.

The latest transfers come ahead of the end of American control of Camp Cropper at Baghdad’s international airport, the sole remaining U.S. prison facility in Iraq. Today the U.S. military will hand over a final 1,600 detainees, while an additional 200 prisoners will be held under joint Iraqi-U.S. custody, according to Ibrahim.

The shutdown of U.S. detention facilities marks a major step as American forces wind down their formal combat mission in Iraq and reduce their troops to 50,000 at the end of August. All remaining U.S. soldiers are scheduled to leave Iraq by the end of 2011.