SADDAM HUSSEIN’S former deputy was hanged before dawn yesterday, the fourth man to be executed in the killings of 148 Shiites following a 1982 assassination attempt against the former leader in the town of Dujail.

Taha Yassin Ramadan, who was Saddam’s vice president when the regime was ousted, went to the gallows on the fourth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq.

Bassam al-Hassani, an adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said the execution went smoothly, although Ramadan appeared frightened and recited the two shahadahs — a declaration of faith — “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet.”

Al-Hassani said precautions were taken to prevent a repeat of what happened to Saddam’s half brother and co-defendant Barzan Ibrahim, who was inadvertently decapitated on the gallows during his January execution.

Ramadan, who was nearly 70, was weighed before the hanging and the rope was chosen accordingly, al-Hassani said.

The execution took place at 3:05 a.m. at a prison at an Iraqi army and police base, which had been the headquarters of Saddam’s military intelligence, in a predominantly Shiite district in northern Baghdad. Ramadan had been in U.S. custody but was handed over to the Iraqis about an hour before the hanging, according to al-Hassani, who witnessed the hanging.

The prosecutor read out the court verdict upholding the death sentence and al-Maliki’s decision to carry it out, the adviser said, adding that a defense lawyer who attended the execution received Ramadan’s written will.

The contents were not revealed, although a Sunni cleric later said Ramadan had asked to be buried near Saddam.

Yahya Ibrahim, a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, said Ramadan’s body will be buried near co-defendants Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar in Ouja, on the outskirts of Tikrit. The graves, along with those of Saddam’s sons Odai and Qusai and a grandson Mustafa, are in the courtyard of the building in which the former leader is buried.

Ramadan was convicted in November of murder, forced deportation and torture and sentenced to life in prison, but an appeals court ruled that was too lenient and he was sentenced to death. (SD-Agencies)

Key facts on Ramadan

* Born in 1938 in the northern city of Mosul, Ramadan joined the underground Baath Party in 1956 and became close to Saddam.

* After the 1968 coup which returned the Baath party to power, Ramadan joined Iraq’s powerful Revolutionary Command Council.

* In 1970, he headed a revolutionary court that executed 44 officers for plotting to overthrow the regime.

* During the 1980s, he was deputy prime minister and was for a time considered the second-most powerful man in Iraq after Saddam.

* Ramadan became vice president in 1991.

* Ramadan proposed in 2002, before the start of the war with Iraq in 2003, that Saddam and U.S. President George W. Bush settle their differences in a duel with weapons of their choice.

* Ramadan was captured in Mosul in August 2003 by Iraqi Kurdish fighters and handed over to U.S. forces.