Former Iraq vice president captured
Former Iraqi vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan, 20th on the US Most Wanted list, was captured in the north of the country and handed to US forces in Mosul today, the Pentagon said.
Arabic TV station Al-Jazeera said he was caught earlier today by troops from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. It said he was disguised as a peasant.
The 65-year-old Ramadan, who came from the Mosul area, was widely considered as ruthless as Saddam.
He was a former bank clerk before Saddam revolution, and in 1970 he headed a court that executed 44 officers for plotting to overthrow the regime.
He also served as a member on Saddam’s Revolutionary Command Council, and was appointed as Saddam’s vice president in March 1991.
During a visit to Jordan in the 1980s, Muslim fundamentalists asked Ramadan what the Baath’s attitude to Islam was. Muslims were free to pray and follow their faith, Ramadan replied, “but if they try to harm the Baathist regime or ridicule its slogans, the regime will break their necks!”
Ramadan is high on the list of regime figures Iraqi opposition groups say should be tried for war crimes.
Born in 1938, he joined the underground Baath Party in 1956 and became close to Saddam. After the 1968 coup by the party, he held several ministerial posts and became a member of the regional command in 1969.
During the 1980s, he was deputy prime minister and was for a time considered the second most powerful man in Iraq after Saddam. He remains commander of the Popular Army, the Baathist militia, but is now considered to be a secondary figure.
