March 20, 2007	Tuesday	Safar 30, 1428

BAGHDAD, March 19: Saddam Hussein’s former vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan will hang for crimes against humanity on Tuesday, according to legal sources who said his lawyers had been summoned on Monday evening.

Badia Aref, a lawyer who represents former deputy prime minsiter Tareq Aziz who also faces charges of crimes against humanity, said the family of Ramadan had telephoned him to ask him to appeal to the president to stop the execution.

Another legal source said the execution was set for Tuesday at dawn and that the family were making a last minute appeal to President Jalal Talabani to stop it.

“The execution is not legal or correct,” Aref said, adding that there should be a 30-day period between final sentence and the implementation of an execution.

Last week an Iraqi appeals court 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 Shias in the town of Dujail in the 1980s for which Saddam and two former aides have already been hanged. But an appeals court recommended that 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.—Reuters