A lawyer representing former Iraqi foreign minister and deputy-prime minister, Tariq Aziz, has slammed the execution of his client's former boss, Saddam Hussein. "The death sentence and execution of Saddam Hussein is illegal, and the signing of the decree [that permitted the carrying out of the sentence] by Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki is not his (al-Maliki's) prerogative," the lawyer, Badi Arif told Adnkronos International (AKI) in an interview. According to Arif, Saddam's hanging on December 30, violated Iraq's penal code which states that a death sentence can only be carried out at least 30 days after its approval and "not after 48 hours as in this case." The lawyer accused al-Maliki of pressing ahead with the hanging by exploiting the absence of scores of Iraqi parliamentarians "on pilgrimage to Mecca" for the Haj. The Iraqi premier did this to "circumvent parliamentary approval of the execution."
"In any case the decree authorising the execution should be the prerogative of the office of the president [Jalal Talabani]" and not the prime minister, Arif argued. The lawyer said Iraq's Shiite politicians pushed ahead with the execution despite appeals by the country's Kurdish leaders as well as Washington to postpone it until the completion of the trial on Saddam's 1986-89 anti-Kurdish campaign, the so-called al-Anfal campaign.