Aziz’s son, Ziad, claimed his father is innocent and that the charges laid against him are “weak”. He said the government is determined to deny him recourse to the “amnesty law which states that anyone held for a year without being referred to court must be released... My father has been in prison for five years without being charged, tried, or investigated.”

Also facing trial are Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam Hussein’s cousin who has already been sentenced to be hang, and his half-brothers Watban Ibrahim, former interior minister, and Sabbawi Ibrahim, a public security chief.

Rashid Abdel Rahman, a Kurdish judge who sentenced ousted President Saddam Hussein to death in 2006, is presiding.

Aziz’s Amman-based lawyer Badie Aref has accused the tribunal of seeking to punish Aziz for refusing to testify against Saddam during his trial. Instead Aziz praised him from the dock and said it had been an honour to work with him. Aziz has been in poor health while in custody and his family said he did not receive proper medical attention when he had a heart attack in 2006.  He is being held at US Camp Cropper attached to Baghdad’s International Airport in a small cell.

Aziz was born Michael Yuhanna in 1936 into a Chaldean Catholic family in a village near the northern city of Mosul. He joined the Baath party in 1957. Although two of the founders of the Baath, Michel Aflaq and Akram Hourani were Christians, Youhanna changed his name to Tariq Aziz to fit in with the non-sectarian spirit of the party. He rose through the ranks when the party seized power in 1968, joined the Revolutionary Command Council in 1977, and served as deputy prime minister and foreign minister.

Aziz had defended Iraq’s 1990 occupation of Kuwait and in 2003 contended that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction as the US was preparing to wage war on Iraq. He surrendered to US forces in April 2003.