Tariq Aziz, the public face of Saddam Hussein's regime who has been held for nearly five years without charge, is now so ill that he will probably die before he is tried.

Saddam's urbane, cigar-smoking Deputy Prime Minister has lung disease and it is unlikely that his case will ever reach court, sources have told The Times.

Mr Aziz's son, Ziad, said that he was unaware of his father's condition because his lawyer had been unable to visit him recently because of security concerns. But he understood that his father had been moved into a shared cell at Camp Cropper, part of the huge US base surrounding Baghdad airport, so a fellow detainee could monitor him.

Ziad Aziz demanded that his father should be charged or released. “Five years is enough to punish him,” he told The Times. “He was part of the regime, but he's never been charged. He's 72. He has a lot of health problems. Let him come out and spend the rest of his life with his grandchildren.”

US military officials confirmed that Mr Aziz was in poor health, but could not discuss the nature of his illness because of privacy concerns.

Mr Aziz was Saddam's leading apologist for 20 years. He surrendered to US forces on the night of April 24, 2003 — soon after Baghdad fell. The US military reciprocated by flying his family to the safety of Jordan.

Ziad Aziz said in an interview that his father did not regret his work for Saddam, and still regarded the former dictator as a great man. “He worked with Saddam more than 35 years. He said ‘He's my friend. He's my leader. He's my president'. . . When they killed Saddam he cried,” he recalled.

But he insisted that his father — the only Christian in Saddam's entourage - bore no responsibility for the regime's genocidal campaign against Iraq's Kurdish minority, its ruthless suppression of the 1991 Shia uprising and other atrocities.

“My father was working only in the political sector,” he said. “He was not responsible for anything against his own people. He was following orders. He was not a decision maker. He was working hard for his country and defending in a good way the Iraqi case.”

At Christmas Cardinal Emmanuel Delly, the Chaldean Christian patriarch of Baghdad, called for his release.

Joseph Logan, an Iraqi specialist with Human Rights Watch, insisted: “People are entitled to confront the evidence against them and be charged or released.”

But a senior US military official said that Mr Aziz was being detained on behalf of the Iraqi Government, and an Iraqi high tribunal had to decide when to hear the evidence against him and whether to bring charges.

Ann Clwyd, the Labour MP who chaired Indict, an organisation that spent seven years investigating Mr Aziz before the war, said he was deeply implicated in Saddam's crimes and should not be released. “We owe it to the victims to see justice is done,” she said.

The US military said that Mr Aziz recieved “the highest standard of care”, and his son conceded that he was being well treated.

Mr Aziz has had a single cell, though half a dozen other detainees share the same unit. They included Bazan Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother, and Taha Ramadan, the former vice-president, until they were executed.

He can make 30 minutes of telephone calls monthly and has access to US Arabic-language radio and television stations. Every two months his family can send a parcel containing clothes, cigarettes, chocolate, coffee and magazines.

However, his family have been unable to visit him since May 2006 when the journey from Jordan became too dangerous. His other friends have fled Baghdad, and his lawyer was his only visitor. Mr Aziz was taken briefly to a US military hospital in Balad last summer after a fall. He is believed to be writing his memoirs.

Ziad Aziz, 42, lives in Amman with his wife, four children, and two sisters. His mother and brother live in Yemen.

Missing cards

— Nine of the Iraqis on the Pentagon’s original “most wanted” deck of cards remain unaccounted for

— The most senior is Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the King of Clubs, who is believed to be hiding in Yemen or Syria

— Three have been executed, including Saddam Hussein, the Ace of Spades

— His sons Uday and Qusay, the Ace of Hearts and the Ace Clubs, were killed in a gunfight

— Of the remaining 38 who were captured or surrendered, two have been sentenced to death: Ali Hassan al-Majid — “Chemical Ali” — who was the King of Spades, and the Defence Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai, who was the Eight of Hearts

— One, Muhammad Hazma al-Zubaydi, a former Prime Minister who was the Queen of Spades, died in custody

— Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, the Five of Hearts, is the only one to have been released. “Mrs Anthrax” was accused of involvement in Saddam's biological weapons program

Sources: Pentagon, Times archives

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