His death has not been confirmed by the Iraqi government, but officials did not denied reports of his capture last week. He is believed to have been arrested on June 16, and died two days later. Jordanian MP Khalil Attieh wrote on his Facebook page that Judge Rahman, who had headed the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal during Hussain's trial, had been arrested and sentenced to death.
'Iraqi revolutionaries arrested him and sentenced him to death in retaliation for the death of the martyr Saddam Hussein,' he said, according to Al-Mesyroon. Attieh also said that Judge Rahman had unsuccessfully attempted to escape from Baghdad disguised in a dancer's costume.
The Facebook page for Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Hussein's former deputy who has emerged as a key figure among the Sunni militants, also posted that the rebels had been able to arrest Judge Rahman. Judge Rahmann, who was born in the Kurdish town of Halabja, took over the trial of Hussein in midway through the trial in January 2006 after previous judge Rizgar Amin was criticised for being too lenient in his dealings with Hussein and his co-defendents. The father of three had graduated from Baghdad University's law school in 1963 and worked as a lawyer before he was appointed as the chief judge of the Kurdistan Appeals Court in 1996.
He oversaw Hussein's trial for crimes against humanity over the killing of 148 people in the town of Dujail following an assassination attemptin 1982, and sentenced him to death by hanging following the guilty verdict.
Judge Rahman had faced claims that he was biased as his home town had been the subject of a poison gas attack in 1988, allegedly ordered by Hussein. A number of Judge Rahman's relatives were among the 5,000 people killed in the attack, and during the 1980s he was also reportedly detained and tortured by Hussein's security agents. The judge later criticised the way the execution was carried out in December 2006, saying in 2008 that it should not have been carried out in public and branding it 'uncivilised and backward'.
The hanging had taken place as Sunni Muslims were celebrating the religious festival Eid al-Adha, and a video of the execution showed the former leader being taunted by members of the Shi'ite group. In March 2007 it was reported that Judge Rahman had applied for asylum in Britain after travelling to the UK with his family on a tourist visa, claiming he feared for his life. He never commented on the claims, which were denied by the Iraqi High Criminal Court Tribunal which said he had merely been in the UK for a holiday.
Culled from: Daily Mail
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