Tariq Aziz: 'Britain and the US killed Iraq. I wish I was martyred'

Apart from his captors and lawyers, Aziz, says he has not seen or spoken to a foreigner since the fall of Baghdad. But after years rotating between solitary confinement and a witness box in court, he is now more than ready to speak.

"It's been seven years and four months that I have been in prison," he told the Guardian. "But did I commit a crime against any civilian, military or religious man? The answer is no."

Iraq has been through hell since Aziz was last seen in public, days before Baghdad fell in April 2003, toppling Hussein and the totalitarian Ba'athist regime that Aziz had helped lead for 30 years.

In his first face-to-face interview since then, Aziz seemingly longed for the old days, while at the same time calling on the US president, Barack Obama, not to "leave Iraq to the wolves".

"Of course I was a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, a leader of the Ba'ath party, deputy prime minister, foreign minister – all of those posts were mine," he says inside the Iraqi prison that he now calls home. Aziz had just returned from another court hearing inside Baghdad's green zone, where the ghosts of Iraq under Saddam are being exorcised in a series of painstaking trials.

However, he claims that he was powerless to stymie the will of the leader he served, and that none of the blood on the regime's hands was also on his.

"All decisions were taken by president Saddam Hussein. I held a political position, I did not participate in any of the crimes that were raised against me personally. Out of hundreds of complaints, nobody has mentioned me in person."

Aziz is serving a 15-year sentence for one conviction for a crime against humanity, but faces many more charges. He claims he is being convicted because of guilt by association, and that he is nothing other than an Arab nationalist loyalist.

Read more in The Guardian...