The chief judge who sentenced former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to death has been killed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the
Daily Mail reported.
Raouf Abdul Rahman headed a five-judge panel that heard nine months of testimony. He sentenced Saddam — as well as Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother and secret police chief, and Awad al-Bandar, head of Saddam's revolutionary court — to death by hanging in 2006 for crimes against humanity,
The New York Times reported.
Rahman took over the Saddam trial after the former presiding judge, Rizgar Mohammed Amin, seemed to have lost control of the proceedings. Rahman was criticized by Saddam's supporters on the grounds that he could not be impartial toward the defendant.
The judge later condemned the "uncivilized and backward" manner in which Saddam was publicly executed in 2006, the Daily Mail said. The dictator was hanged on the Muslim religious holiday of Eid al-Adha.
Rahman was reportedly seized by ISIS on June 16, the Daily Mail reported. The Shiite-controlled Iraqi government in Baghdad has made no comment on his fate, according to the newspaper.
Word of Rahman's assassination came in gloating Facebook posts by Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam's former No. 2 official, and by a staunchly Islamist member of the Jordanian parliament, Khalil Attieh.
"Iraqi revolutionaries arrested him and sentenced him to death in retaliation for the death of the martyr Saddam Hussein," Attieh wrote, the Mail reported.