Taha Yassin Ramadan

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Taha Yasin Ramadan al-Jizrawi (February 22, 1938 – March 20, 2007) (Arabic: طه ياسين رمضان الجزراوي‎) was the Vice President of Iraq from March 1991 to the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Born in Mosul. He became a bank clerk after completing his education.^[1] In 1956 he joined the Ba'ath Party where he worked with Saddam Hussein, becoming a member of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council after the 1963 coup that brought the Ba'ath Party to power.^[1] For a time he led the Popular Army, which was dissolved in 1991 when Saddam made him Vice President of Iraq.^[1]

In July 1979, opening a specially convened Ba'ath Party meeting, Taha Yasin Ramadan announced that there was a plot against Saddam Hussein who read out a list of more than sixty names of alleged conspirators. They were led away and during that same day they were tried with fifty-five of them being found guilty. Of the fifty-five, twenty-two were executed.^[2]

[edit] Capture, trial and execution

Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Taha Yasin Ramadan was placed on the U.S. list of most-wanted Iraqis, and later depicted as the Ten of Diamonds in the most-wanted Iraqi playing cards. He was captured on August 19, 2003 in Mosul, by fighters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and handed over to US forces.^[3]

He was a defendant in the Iraq Special Tribunal's Al-Dujail trial. On November 5, 2006 he was sentenced to life imprisonment. On November 8, 2005, while he was on trial, one of his defense lawyers, Adel al-Zubeidi, was assassinated by three gunmen.^[4]

However, on December 26, 2006 the appeals court sent the case file back to the Tribunal, saying the sentence was too lenient and demanding a death sentence.^[5] On February 12, 2007 he was sentenced to death by hanging^[6]. His sentence was carried out before dawn on March 20, 2007 ^[7]. His son Ahmad Ramadan stated his father would be buried in Tikrit, near Saddam's burial place, adding: "It was not an execution. It was a political assassination."^[8]

[edit] References