Iraqi tribunal to issue death sentence for Saddam VP News
Iraqi tribunal to issue death sentence for Saddam VP

[JURIST] Former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan [Trial Watch profile] will be sentenced to death at a hearing before the Iraqi High Tribunal [official website] now scheduled for January 25, according to a court spokesperson speaking to the press on Tuesday. Ramadan was convicted [JURIST report; BBC verdict summary] in November in connection with crimes against humanity committed in the town of Dujail in 1982. In the tribunal appeals chamber's December 26 decision upholding Saddam Hussein's death sentence [JURIST report], the court also ruled that a life sentence for Ramadan was too lenient and ordered the trial court to re-sentence him.

Two other co-defendants in the Saddam Hussein trial [JURIST news archive], former chief judge of Iraq's Hussein-era Revolutionary Court Awad Hamed al-Bandar [Wikipedia profile] and former Iraqi intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim al Tikriti [GlobalSecurity profile; BBC profile] were executed [JURIST report] earlier this week. AP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Pope Urban II sparks First Crusade

Pope Urban II threw his support behind what would become the First Crusade on November 27, 1095 during the Council of Clairmont. The Pope urged the council's participants to render aid to the Byzantine Empire, which was being attacked by the Seljuks. Pope Urban called for a wide coalition of rich and poor to combat the threat, which eventually resulted in the conquest of much of the Muslim-controlled Levant by the Crusaders and the establishment of the Crusader States. Read Pope Urban's address.  

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