Tariq Aziz (28 April 1936 – 5 June 2015), born Mikhail Yuhanna (Yohannon) and baptized as Manuel Christo, was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iraq from 1983 to 1991 and the Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council from 1979 to 2003.
Biography[]
Mikhail Yuhanna was born to a Chaldean Catholic family in Tel Keppe, Iraq, and was baptised as "Manuel Christo". He met Saddam Hussein in the 1950s when the two were activists for the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, and Aziz was an Arab nationalist despite his Chaldean heritage. In 1965 he was made a member of the Regional Command of the Iraqi Regional Branch, and after Saddam's 1979 coup he became the Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council.
As a member of the RCC, he played a military role in the early years of the Iran-Iraq War, but in 1983 he was made Minister of Foreign Affairs, representing President Saddam abroad. He was responsible for the displacement of northern Iraq's Kurdish population during the Kurdish rebellion, and in 1992 Aziz was responsible for executing 42 merchants found guilty of profiteering.
In 2003, after the United States and United Kingdom invaded Iraq during the Iraq War, Aziz was taken prisoner. Aziz was sentenced to death by the new government of Iraq, but the United Nations, Russia, Amnesty International, and many other countries protested this. In 2010, President Jalal Talabani announced that he refused to sign Aziz's execution order. On 5 June 2015, Tariq Aziz died at the age of 79 in the al-Hussein hospital of Nasiriyah after suffering from ill health in prison; while in jail he suffered from depression, diabetes, heart disease, and ulcers.