Iraq's former No. 2 Tareq Aziz is ready for trial "as quickly as possible" by a special Iraqi court set up to try leaders of the Saddam Hussein regime, his lawyer said.
Badie Aref Ezzat, who attended a four-hour interrogation of Aziz by an examining magistrate at the place where he is detained near Baghdad airport on Monday, said his client had reaffirmed his refusal to testify against other former leaders.
"He stated that he was not prepared to testify against the former leaders to obtain a lightening of his eventual sentence," the lawyer said.
Aziz "asked that the charges against him be made clear and said he was ready to reply," Ezzat went on, adding that he wanted to know the names of his judges and to be helped by lawyers, including some from abroad.
The lawyer said he had noted an improvement in the treatment of his clients held under US guard.
"They have received clothing, cigarettes and medicines and that's good," he said.
Aziz, born in 1936 and a fluent English speaker, was a common face on foreign television during his stint as foreign minister and later as deputy prime minister starting in 1983. He surrendered to US forces in April 2003.
Wearing his trademark bottle-bottom glasses, Aziz was a fiercely loyal Saddam supporter and traveled to foreign events when the dictator would not leave for security reasons.
Aziz was from an Assyrian Christian family and, although he was outside of Saddam's inner circle, he had known Saddam since the 1950s.
He was No. 25 on the US deck of 55 cards of most-wanted Saddam cronies -- the eight of spades.
Ezzat said he is also representing the former head of Saddam's intelligence service.
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