Almotamar.net Google News - BAGHDAD — The Iraqi government asked U.S. authorities late Monday for custody of Saddam Hussein's former deputy to hang him at dawn Tuesday, officials in the prime minister's office said.
An appeals court upheld the death sentence against Taha Yassin Ramadan late last week. He was Saddam's vice president when the regime was ousted by the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Ramadan was originally spared the gallows and sentenced to life in prison in the trial of former regime officials for the killing of 148 Shiites in 1982, after an attempt on Saddam's life in the city of Dujail.
Saddam and two other regime members were sentenced to die and were hanged. Saddam was executed on Dec. 30. Two of his co-defendants in the Dujail case — his half brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court — were executed in January.
The officials in the prime minister's office, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information, said U.S. authorities had not yet responded to the request for custody but were expected to as a matter of course.