Rauf Rashid Abd al-Rahman (born 1941) is the replacement chief judge of the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal's

Al-Dujail trial The trial of Saddam Hussein was the trial of the deposed President of Iraq Saddam Hussein by the Iraqi Interim Government for crimes against humanity during his time in office. The Coalition Provisional Authority voted to create the Iraqi Sp ...

Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolution ...

in 2006, when he sentenced Saddam and some of his top aides to death by hanging. Abd al-Rahman is an ethnic

Kurd ug:كۇردلار Kurds ( ku, کورد ,Kurd, italic=yes, rtl=yes) or Kurdish people are an Iranian ethnic group native to the mountainous region of Kurdistan in Western Asia, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Ira ...

from

Halabja Halabja ( ku, هەڵەبجە, Helebce, ) is a city in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the capital of Halabja Governorate, located about northeast of Baghdad and from the Iranian border. The city lies at the base of what is often referred t ...

, 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 Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti ( ar, علي حسن عبد المجيد التكريت, ʿAlī Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Majīd al-Tikrītī; 30 November 1941 – 25 January 2010), nicknamed Chemical Ali ( ar, علي الكيمياوي, ʿAlī al-Kīm ...

. In December 2006, Abd al-Rahman took his family to Britain on a travel visa, and according to ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday 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 Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic language, Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician language, Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major ancient Egyptian deities, goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughou ...

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.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rahman, Rauf Rashid Abd People from Sulaymaniyah Province Iraqi Kurdish people 21st-century Iraqi judges Living people Year of birth uncertain