27 October 2010 :

Radical Deputies and Senators presented in the Italian Parliament a motion on the death penalty against Tareq Aziz:
 
The Chamber of Deputies, the Senate
 
Given that:
 
On October 26th 2010, the former Iraqi vice president Tareq Aziz – together with the former Minister for the Interior, Saadun Shaker, and the former personal secretary to Saddam Hussein, Abdel Hamid Hamud – has been condemned to the death penalty by hanging by the High Criminal Court of Baghdad.
 
The sentence follows one of the seven trials faced by Tareq Aziz, regarding the campaign launched by the regime of Saddam Hussein in the 1980s against the pro-Iranian Shiite political parties, which during those years resulted in a series of arrests and condemnations against the principal Shiite personalities.
 
Considering that:
 
there can be no impunity for the crimes committed by the described Iraqi regime and that the crimes for which Tareq Aziz is being tried, together with others, consist of grave and systematic violations of human rights and the international humanitarian law;
 
nonetheless, the Iraqi penal system as a whole cannot disregard the international judicial standards and, in particular, the principles set out by the Tribunals and the International Criminal Courts, which exclude the recourse to the death penalty for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity;
 
the trials against Tareq Aziz and his co-defendants seem not to have been conducted in full respect of all internationally recognized guarantees of impartiality and equity, instead the judicial action shows more resemblance to the justice of winners over losers or the revenge of victims against their tormentor;
 
in July 2008, exactly against the feared condemnation to death of Tareq Aziz, hundreds of Parliamentarians of all political colors, Nobel Prize winners and personalities from all over the world subscribed the international appeal Universal Moratorium on the death penalty, also for Tareq Aziz, promoted by “Hands off Cain” and the Nonviolent Radical Party, Transnational and Transparty, to ask for the upholding of the law and the truth, legality and justice on and in Iraq;
 
explicitly stressed in the above mentioned international appeal was “to avoid the condemnation to death and the execution of Tareq Aziz, which risks to happen without a trial worthy of that name, could mark a clear solution of continuity with respect to methods and practices in vogue at the time of Saddam, as well as to ensure truth and justice for all victims of the regime, and not only those for which Aziz is on trial today”;
 
to assist in the reconstruction of the historic truth on the responsibilities of the regime and the events that have characterized the Iraqi history up until the war, guaranteeing the life of a key witness such as the former Iraqi vice-president appears to of fundamental importance;
 
by hanging another excellent witness, Iraq risks to repeat the tragic error already made with Saddam Hussein, thus preventing the assessment of the truth, which is a fundamental right and of inalienable interest to the entire human community, a right all the more precious considering the elevated price paid in terms of lost human lives and suffering in Iraq;
 
on these objectives, as from October 2nd 2010, Marco Pannella has again taken up his Satyagraha with a hunger strike which, on October 26, at the notification of the condemnation to death of Tareq Aziz, has turned into a complete hunger and thirst strike in prevention of the execution.
 
Commits the government to:
 
urgently intervene with the Iraqi authorities in order to prevent the execution of Tareq Aziz and his co-defendants, in coherence with the extraordinary nonviolent, parliamentary, institutional initiative and with the public opinion, which on December 18th 2007 led to the historic result of the adoption of the Universal Moratorium against Death Penalty by the UN General Assembly;
 
become the promoter between the European partners of a formal request to the Iraqi authority to reintroduce the moratorium on death penalty established in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, in order to strengthen the completion of the democratic transition of Iraq in accordance with the principles of a state obeying the rule of law and respecting the highest standards of international justice.