BAGHDAD -- Tariq Aziz, the debonair Iraqi diplomat who made his name by staunchly defending Saddam Hussein to the world during three wars and was later sentenced to death as part of the regime that killed hundreds of thousands of its own people, has died in a hospital in southern Iraq, officials said. He was 79.
Aziz, who had been in custody in a prison in the south, died Friday afternoon after he was taken to the al-Hussein hospital in the city of Nasiriyah after a heart attack, according to the provincial governor, Yahya al-Nassiri.
Aziz, the highest-ranking Christian in Saddam's regime, was its international face for years. He was sentenced in 2010 to hang for persecuting members of the Shiite Muslim religious parties that now dominate Iraq.
His wife, Violet, had visited him in prison Thursday, their daughter Zeinab said. Her father had suffered several strokes that left him confined to a wheelchair and unable to speak during their parents' final meeting, she said.
"It is so sad that he had to go this way," Zeinab said, speaking outside the family's home in Amman, Jordan, where friends and relatives gathered. "So sad that he didn't see his grandchildren, so sad that he had to spend his last years alone, sick and alone, and in this very humiliating circumstance.
"But I want people to remember what he did," she added. "He really fought for his country, in his own way."
Aziz's religion rescued him from the hangman's noose that was the fate of other members of the top regime leadership.
After he was sentenced to death, the Vatican asked for mercy for him as a Christian. Iraq's president at the time, Jalal Talabani, then refused to give the death sentence his required signature, citing Aziz's age and religion.
Elegant and eloquent, Aziz spoke fluent English, smoked Cuban cigars and was loyal to Saddam to the last, even naming one of his sons after the dictator. His posts included that of foreign minister and deputy prime minister, and he sat on the Revolutionary Command Council, the highest body in Saddam's regime.
His main role was as the regime's go-to man to communicate with the West. A skilled operator in the halls of the United Nations, he was the regime's frontman in dealing with U.N. inspectors trying to track and assure the dismantling of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
As bombs rained down on Baghdad during the U.S.-led 2003 invasion, Aziz said of American forces: "We will receive them with the best music they have ever heard and the best flowers that have ever grown in Iraq. ... We don't have candy; we can only offer them bullets."
His freedom ended shortly afterward. The U.S. military knocked on his door in Baghdad on April 24, 2003, and he surrendered without resistance.
Still, his prominence as an international spokesman -- and his outsider status as a Christian in a Sunni Muslim-dominated regime -- gave supporters fuel to argue that he was not a real decision-maker in Saddam's regime and was less to blame in the torture and bloody crackdowns it inflicted on Iraqis.
Aziz was born to a Chaldean Catholic family in Tell Kaif, Iraq, in 1936. He studied English literature at Baghdad College of Fine Arts and became a teacher and journalist. He joined the Baath Party in 1957, working closely with Saddam to overthrow British-imposed monarchy.
Saddam took charge in 1979. Aziz was deputy prime minister a year later when attackers hurled a grenade at him in downtown Baghdad. Several people were killed; Aziz was injured. It was one of several attacks Saddam blamed on Iran -- part of his justification for the expulsion of large numbers of Shiite Muslims and Iraq's 1980 invasion of Iran.
Aziz was instrumental in restoring diplomatic relations with the United States in 1984, after a 17-year break. At the time, Washington backed Iraq as a buffer against Iran's Islamic extremism.
That changed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Aziz met in January 1991 with then-Secretary of State James Baker in Geneva in a failed attempt to prevent the Gulf War, and the U.S. broke off ties with Saddam's government for good. He also met with the late Pope John Paul II at the Vatican just weeks before the March 2003 invasion in a bid to stop it.
Years later in court, Aziz again defended Saddam.
A star defense witness for his former boss in 2006, a thin and pale-looking Aziz insisted Saddam had no choice but to crack down in the Shiite town of Dujail after a 1982 shooting attack on the president's motorcade there blamed on Shiite opponents.
"If the head of state comes under attack, the state is required by law to take action," said Aziz.
Aziz himself stood trial in seven cases -- nearly all on charges of crimes against humanity related to Saddam's campaigns against Shiite political parties and Kurds. He was convicted in all but two and sentenced to death by hanging in October 2010 for his involvement in the former regime's bloody persecution of Shiites.
Aziz is survived by his wife, sons Ziad and Saddam, and daughters, Zeinab and Mayssa.
Information for this article was contributed by Karin Laub of The Associated Press.
A Section on 06/06/2015