IRAQ:Saddam Hussein's former vice-president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, will be hanged today for crimes against humanity, according to legal sources, who said his lawyers had been summoned yesterday evening.
Badia Aref, a lawyer representing former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, who faces similar charges, said Ramadan's family had asked him to appeal to President Jalal Talabani to stop the execution. Another legal source said the execution was set for today and that the family was making a last-minute appeal to the president to stop it.
"The execution is not legal or correct," Mr Aref said, adding there should be a 30-day period between a final sentence being passed and an execution being carried out.
An Iraqi appeals court last week upheld a decision by the High Court to hang Ramadan and a judge said the death sentence could be carried out "at any moment". Ramadan was sentenced in November to life in jail for his role in the killing of 148 Shia in the town of Dujail in the 1980s for which Saddam and two former aides have already been hanged. But an appeals court recommended he receive the death penalty and referred the case back to the trial court.
The trial court in November found Ramadan guilty of issuing orders for the systematic detention, torture and killing of men, women and children from Dujail following an attempt on Saddam's life there in 1982. Saddam was executed at the end of December, days after the sentence was passed, while the aides were executed in January.
While the president normally has the power to stop executions, the prosecution and the government say he has no power of veto when it comes to crimes against humanity.
Meanwhile in Iraq yesterday, three car bombs and two roadside devices killed 18 people and wounded 37 in the northern city of Kirkuk.