Saddam's judge forced to flee Iraq

In a sign of the relative stability and calm produced by Bush's increasingly successful "surge" in Iraq, the Judge who convicted Saddam has been forced to flee the country with his family and seek asylum in Britain:

The Iraqi judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to death has fled Iraq and sought asylum in the UK.

Al Jazeera's correspondent in London quoted British official sources as saying on Friday that Raouf Abdel-Rahman, a member of Iraq's Kurdish minority, has requested political asylum in Britain with his family.

Rahman headed the Supreme Iraq Criminal Tribunal that heard Saddam's genocide trial and found the former Iraqi president guilty, leading to his execution.