By The Daily Star (Lebanon)
Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai will intervene to secure the release of the former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz at the request of his son, Al-Markaziah News Agency reported Monday.
Ziyad
Tariq Aziz visited Rai in Bkirki and asked the prelate to intervene
and ask that Iraqi authorities release his father, who he said was in
critical condition due to old age.
The son also said his father, the only Christian who was part of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle, was in a coma state.
Aziz
also relayed to Rai a message from the Iraqi Chaldean patriarch, who
the son said had visited the former Iraqi official in prison.
Rai
promised Aziz to intervene once again - the Lebanese patriarch had
pleaded to Iraqi authorities to release the official during his visit to Baghdad in 2011.
Despite repeated calls to release Aziz, who was sentences to 15 years in prison for crimes he committed during Saddam’s reign, Iraq has refused to set him free.