Rauf Rashid Abd al-Rahman, Date of Birth, Place of Birth
TweetRauf Rashid Abd al-Rahman
Iraqi judge
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Halabja, Iraq
About Rauf Rashid Abd al-Rahman
- Rauf Rashid Abd al-Rahman (born c.
- 1941) is the replacement chief judge of the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal's Al-Dujail trial of Saddam Hussein in 2006, when he sentenced Saddam and some of his top aides to death by hanging. Abd al-Rahman is an ethnic Kurd from Halabja, the site of the 1988 Halabja poison gas attack.
- He replaced Rizgar Mohammed Amin as chief judge on 23 January 2006.
- Amin had resigned after being criticised in the Iraqi media for appearing "too soft" on the defendants by allowing them to speak aloud in court without being recognized.
- After Amin's resignation, Abd al-Rahman headed the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal during the rest of the trial of Saddam Hussein for genocide, and when it sentenced him to death.
- He also sentenced to death some of Hussein's top aides.
- He was reportedly held and tortured by Hussein's security agents in the 1980s, and he lost several relatives in 1988 when his home town was hit by a poison gas attack, an attack ordered by Hussein and his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid.In December 2006, Abd al-Rahman took his family to Britain on a travel visa, and according to The Times and Sun Online applied for asylum.
- The claim of his seeking asylum was directly disputed by the Iraqi High Criminal Court Tribunal, which said Abd al-Rahman was merely "enjoying a vacation with his family", and Abd al-Rahman never commented on the claim.In June 2014, some western media outlets reported that Abd al-Rahman was captured and executed by ISIS militants while attempting to escape from Baghdad.
- However, a spokesperson for the Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) Ministry of Justice in Erbil has refuted the claims and confirmed the judge to be alive.
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