Taha Yassin, Ramadan a member of the Baath Party, a Kurd born in Mosul and loyal to the party in which he rose to become the late Vice President Saddam Hussein, held several positions, including Minister of Industry and has many political positions, and was executed in 2007 for participating in the Dujail massacre in 1982.

He encouraged the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) and contributed to the invasion of Kuwait in 1991, was arrested by Kurdish forces after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and handed over to US forces, and tried along with Saddam and the rest of his government.

Birth and upbringing

Taha Yassin Ramadan al-Jazrawi was born in 1938 to a family of Kurdish farmers north of the Iraqi city of Mosul.

Nicknamed Jazrawi after the Kurdish city of Jazra in southeastern Turkey, despite his Kurdish origin, he did not speak Kurdish after the age of 11.

He worked as a clerk in a bank after completing secondary education, and he did not excel in the field of knowledge like the rest of the leaders of President Saddam Hussein, but suffered from poor educational qualifications.

Progression in positions

Taha Yassin Ramadan joined the Baath Party in 1956, and after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958, Baath Party militants, including Saddam Hussein, tried to kill the new ruler, Abdul Karim Qassem.

A deputy officer in the Iraqi army, he rose through the ranks of the party until he joined its leadership in 1966, and rose to prominence after participating in the July 17, 1968 coup in which the party overthrew the then Iraqi president.

The third was the three who remained at large after the coup, along with Saddam Hussein and Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, while the rest of the coup leaders were imprisoned or executed.

Political thinker Hassan al-Alawi said Taha Yassin "was reluctant, cautious, obedient to his leadership and incompetent, which made him fear the party's leaders more than the opposition".

Taha Yassin Ramadan known for his quick and accurate management of all the tasks entrusted to him (Getty Images)

After the coup, Taha was promoted to the rank of captain, then entered the Revolutionary Command Council and began to purge the supposed enemies, after which he obtained the rank of major and became a link between the leadership and the party.

In the seventies, he was appointed minister of industry, telling colleagues, "I don't know anything about industry, all I know is that anyone who doesn't work will be executed."

He presided over a revolutionary court in 1970, issued summary proceedings and in a few hours sentenced more than 40 officers to death for plotting to overthrow the government.

In 1974, Jazrawi took command of the People's Army, a 250,<>-strong paramilitary force protecting the regime.

Taha was deputy regional command of the regional branch from 1979 to 1991, which made him a major role in the combat capabilities of the Iraqi army.

He was very close to Saddam Hussein, holding several positions and being appointed vice president in 1991, disbanding the SPLA military force.

Ramadan was known for his ruthless behavior, presiding over private trials formed by the Baath Party.

He was also known for his careful and rapid management of the tasks entrusted to him, so he was entrusted with many executive tasks and entrusted with the Ministry of Construction and Housing and the chairmanship of the Economic Committee in the eighties and other tasks.

His most prominent political positions

Taha Yassin played Ramadan an "incitement" role in carrying out the 1982 Dujail massacre, in which 143 people were killed.

That was after Saddam's visit to the town of Dujail, where gunmen shot at his convoy and killed two of his guards, the gunmen were from the Iran-backed Shiite Dawa Party.

Approximately 1500,612 people and families of 4 were arrested, and Dujail orchards were bombed and combed, and the arrests lasted nearly <> months.

In 1991, he called the Gulf War a "victory for Baghdad" because it was the beginning of saying "no" to the forces of aggression.

That same year, he threatened to smear anyone investigating human rights violations in Kuwait during the invasion.

Taha Yassin Ramadan al-Jazrawi was born to a Kurdish family, but he did not belong to the Kurds and did not speak Kurdish after his childhood (AP)

In February 1991 he called for the assassination of Bush, Mitterrand and "the rest of the dirty dwarves," referring to some Arab leaders.

Taha was known for his violence, militancy and dedication to obedience to President Saddam Hussein, and was often sent abroad as an envoy of the Iraqi regime.

In 1998, he angered the Arab League by questioning the powers of the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border drawn by the United Nations.

Yet Taha Yassin Ramadan later spearheaded the regional rapprochement between Iraq and its neighbors, and between them and Russia, India, and Iran.

Taha Yassin was charged with several crimes against humanity for his role in crushing Shiite demonstrations in southern Iraq and was accused of involvement in the killing of thousands of Kurds in the north in 1988.

He had been subjected to two assassination attempts in the nineties, one in 1997 and another in 1999.

In the American invasion

In October 2002, at the height of the dispute between US President George W. Bush and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, al-Jazrawi proposed a duel between the two presidents and their delegates on neutral ground.

He suggested that the fencers be of the same rank and with prior agreement on the quality of the weapons, and challenged Ramadan US Vice President Dick Cheney. But that proposal was rejected by White House Secretary Ari Fleischer.

As the threat of a U.S. invasion mounted, Taha Yassin called on Ramadan Muslims to become "human bombs," and negotiations to break the impasse through Syria and Turkey failed.

Taha Yassin participated in the Dujail massacre and was tried to convict it along with Saddam Hussein and the rest of his government (Associated Press)

On March 20, 2003, the Americans and the British invaded Iraq, and after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government, Taha Yassin became Ramadan among the most wanted on the US list, and was ranked among the 55 most wanted in Saddam's regime.

His attitude towards the Kurds led them to arrest him

Journalist and researcher Hamid Abdullah confirmed that Taha Yassin did not consider himself a Kurd at all, and he used to tell those close to him that he was Iraqi and that his loyalty was only to Iraq.

He adds that his Kurdish origin did not affect his loyalty to Saddam, so that the latter did not choose him to negotiate with the Kurds, and may have feared being accused of leaning towards them in exchange for loyalty to an Arab nationalist party such as the Baath.

In the first attempt to arrest him, Kurdish Peshmerga forces suddenly entered the farm where he was hiding, but they did not find him, and found important documents in which he planned to organize a resistance team.

Peshmerga forces arrested Mohammed Rashid al-Daoudi, who was accompanying Taha Yassin, and took him to Sulaymaniyah for interrogation, who revealed details of his movement and hiding location.

After pressuring and enticing him to pardon him, he escorted the Kurdish force to Ramadan's hideout, a house in a Mosul neighborhood, and Ramadan tried to escape but was arrested on August 19, 2003.

On the day of his arrest, he spoke to the Peshmerga in Arabic because he was not fluent in Kurdish, and told them that he had forgotten it because he had not spoken it since childhood.

The Kurds handed him over to U.S. forces in Mosul, held in their detention centers and tortured, according to his lawyer, and he stated during his trial.

Trial and execution

Ramadan was tried along with Saddam Hussein and other members of his government and brought to justice in 2005 for their role in the 1982 Dujail massacre.

He was sentenced to death on December 26, 2006, for the massacre, and said in court, "God knows that I am innocent and will take revenge on all those who wronged me."

Some of the victims of the Dujail massacre, for which Taha Yassin was executed after conviction in 2007 (Getty Images)

Taha Yassin Ramadan was hanged on the fourth anniversary of the US invasion at dawn on March 20, 2007, and his son said his execution was "a political assassination, not an execution."

His body was transported by US helicopter to Camp Speicher outside Tikrit, then transported by police car in a convoy of 15 cars to the village of al-Awja.

He was buried there according to Islamic ceremonies near Saddam Hussein, draped in the Iraqi flag and funeral by hundreds of villagers, while American helicopters flew overhead.