TARIQ AZIZ DUE ON TRIAL IN IRAQ!

Tariq Aziz was the international face of Saddam's government for years.
Iraq's former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz is due on trial over the deaths of a group of merchants in 1992.
Mr Aziz, along with seven other former members of Saddam Hussein's regime, are accused of involvement in the execution of about 40 merchants in Baghdad.
The merchants were accused of hiking food prices at a time when Iraq was under international sanctions. They were executed after a speedy trial.
Mr Aziz's son, Ziad, has said that his father is innocent.

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"My father told me personally that he had nothing to do with this case. At the time, my father was on an official assignment outside of Iraq," Ziad Aziz told the AFP news agency.
"None of the families of these merchants filed suits against my father," he said.
The trial will be conducted by the Iraqi High Tribunal which was set up to try former members of Saddam Hussein's regime.
Saddam Hussein himself was executed in December 2006 after being convicted of crimes against humanity, over the killing of 148 Shia men and boys after a 1982 assassination attempt against him.
Judge Rauf Rasheed Abdel Rahman, an Iraqi Kurd, will preside at the trial. He is the same judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to death.

BBC NEWS REPORT.