Tareq Aziz, the international face of hanged president Saddam Hussein's regime, is set to appear before the Iraqi High Tribunal on Tuesday without the new legal team he demanded three weeks ago, reorted Middle East Online.
His first court appearance ended abruptly after he said he wanted new lawyers because his Iraqi counsel Badie Izzat Aref was unable to attend for "security reasons."
The trial was then adjourned until May 20 so new lawyers could be appointed, but Aziz, who faces charges linked to the execution of 42 Baghdad merchants in 1992, may now have to seek a new court date or represent himself on Tuesday.
His Amman-based son Ziad Aziz said on Saturday that French lawyer Jacques Verges, four Italian lawyers and a French-Lebanese attorney will be unable to attend Tuesday's hearing in Baghdad because they have yet to receive visas.
"All the lawyers who have declared their readiness to defend my father have not received visas to enter Iraq to attend the trial on Tuesday," Aziz said.
Aref has also said he will not attend because he has not received assurances from the government about his security.
Aziz, 71, is being tried at the court presided over by the same judge who sentenced Saddam to death for his role in the killing of 148 Shiite civilians after an assassination attempt against him in 1982.
Saddam was hanged on December 30, 2006, and former deputy prime minister Aziz also faces the prospect of death by hanging or life in jail if convicted.
Saddam associates Taha Yassin Ramadan, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Ahmed al-Bandar, were also executed after being convicted in the same case.
Verges has defended some of the world's most notorious figures, including Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and Venezuelan terrorist "Carlos the Jackal."
Aziz's lawyers want the trial to be moved to Iraqi Kurdistan in the relatively quiet north of the country or to be transferred abroad to ensure it is not influenced by the Baghdad government.
Aziz, a long-time foreign minister under Saddam, was known worldwide as the main frontman for the Iraqi regime.
In 2003, he undertook a high-profile tour of European capitals for talks with political leaders and the late pope John Paul II in a bid to stop the US-led invasion.
He surrendered to American forces in April 2003 and stands accused, with seven others, of executing businessmen for hiking food prices at a time when Iraq was under tight UN economic sanctions.
Prosecutors have said that the victims were arrested in Baghdad's wholesale markets and executed after a speedy trial in 1992. They also charge that Saddam's regime then seized their money and property.
Aziz, Ali Hassan al-Majid -- otherwise known as Chemical Ali -- and Saddam's half-brother Watban Ibrahim al-Hassan are the most high profile of the eight defendants.
Aziz was born in Iraq's main northern city of Mosul to a Chaldean Catholic family. He changed his given name, Michael Yuhanna, to Tareq Aziz to prevent any Arab nationalist hostility to his Christian background.
He knew Saddam from the 1950s but was kept outside the closed circle of the Iraqi strongman's Sunni Arab clansmen from the central region of Tikrit.
Ziad Aziz said he had telephoned his father on Thursday and that they spoke for 11 minutes.
"He told me he would defend himself if none of his lawyers can attend the trial," he said.
"His health was okay," Aziz said in Amman. "But he told me that he did not receive the summer clothes and the cigarettes that I had sent to him via the Red Cross at the start of the month."