UN rights chief seeks to halt new Iraqi execution

GENEVA, Feb 8 (Reuters) UN human rights chief Louise Arbour today urged an Iraqi court not to condemn former Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan to death for crimes against humanity, saying the sentence would break international law.

The Iraqi high court is due to consider on Monday a recommendation by a lower court that an earlier sentence of life imprisonment be toughened to one of death for Ramadan's role in the 1982 killing of 148 Shi'ite men and boys after a failed assassination attempt against former president Saddam Hussein.

The office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, a former war crimes' prosecutor and Canadian Supreme Court judge, said that Arbour had filed a 38-page brief with the Iraqi court laying out her arguments against the toughening of the sentence.

In it she asserts that ''international law prohibits the imposition of the death penalty in the case of Taha Yassin Ramadan,'' her office said in a statement.

Ramadan was convicted in November after being tried with Saddam and several other defendants. Saddam and two other defendants have already been hanged.

Arbour, who had also called for the other death sentences not to be carried out, said that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Iraq has signed, sets strict limitations on when death sentences can be given.

''In the circumstances, the High Commissioner submits, the court should refrain from imposing the death sentence,'' the statement said.

REUTERS DKS BST0031