Kurdish judge in Saddam Hussein trial runs for Iraqi presidency
Amin, 65, is running as an independent nominee and would require the vote of two-thirds of lawmakers present during the upcoming parliamentary session on the issue.
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Rizgar Mohammed Amin, the one-time chief judge in the trial of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and other associates, is running for Iraq's presidency, he told Kurdistan 24 on Tuesday.
Would-be candidates for the post began formally submitting their names to the Iraqi parliament on Sunday after the country's newly-elected lawmakers held their inaugural session and elected the legislature's speakership and their two deputies.
Within a month after that, members of parliament are expected to hold a vote on the future president, a position reserved for a Kurdish candidate since 2005 according to an unwritten agreement among the country's different ethnic and religious groups.
Amin, 65, is running as an independent nominee and would require the vote of two-thirds of lawmakers present during the parliamentary session on the issue. Ameen was a member of the Kurdistan Parliament until 2010.
He was the chief judge who presided over the trial on the Dujail massacre, in which 142 Shia civilians were killed following an assassination attempt of the former dictator in the early 1980s. Amin later stepped down from the post over what he said was "political interference" in the trials.
Judge Ahmed Rauf replaced him, who later sentenced Saddam Hussein to death by hanging.
Kurdish political parties have not presented their nominee yet. The sitting president, Barham Salih, was elected into office in 2018 as a candidate of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the second-largest party in the Kurdistan Region.
