An Iraqi appeals court upheld yesterday a decision by the High Court to hang Saddam Hussein's former Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan and a judge said the death sentence could be carried out "at any moment."

Ramadan was sentenced in November to life in jail for his role in the killing of 148 Shi'ites in the town of Dujail in the 1980s for which Saddam and two former aides have already been hanged. But an appeals court recommended that he receive the death penalty and referred the case back to the trial court.

"After checking the case, the appeal court found that the hardening of the life sentence to death sentence by the Iraqi High Court was in accordance with the law so the appeal court has decided to uphold the death sentence against the criminal Taha Yassin Ramadan," judge Munir Haddad said.

Reading a statement at the court's marbled building in Baghdad, a former headquarters of Saddam's Baath party, Haddad told reporters the decision was final and that the sentence could be "carried out at any moment."

He said that under Iraqi law the hanging must take place within 30 days.

The ruling was widely expected since it was the same appeals court that originally recommended the tougher sentence.

The trial court in November found Ramadan guilty of issuing orders for the systematic detention, torture and killing of men, women and children from Dujail following an attempt on Saddam's life there in 1982.

New York-based Human Rights Watch, which raised concerns about the fairness of the original trial, had said there had been a lack of evidence tying Ramadan to the Dujail killings.

Saddam's execution in December sparked anger among fellow Sunni Arabs, who were outraged by a video showing the ousted leader being hanged to sectarian taunts from official observers.

His half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti was executed two weeks later in a botched hanging in which he was decapitated.

(China Daily via agencies March 16, 2007)