The judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to hang for crimes against the Iraqi people has asked for political asylum in Britain.

Raouf Abdul Rahman is understood to be seeking sanctuary in the UK after he and his family received death threats from insurgents linked to the former ruling Ba'ath Party.

The judge, a Kurd, took control of Saddam's trial in Baghdad last year to end a series of interruptions by defendants and political speeches which had reduced the legal process to chaos and extended the hearing by months.

He also told Saddam at one stage to remember he was a prisoner on trial for his life and no longer the dictator of Iraq.

Judge Rahman was appointed by the fledgling Iraqi government largely because he had no ethnic or vested religious ties with the Shia or Sunni sects of Islam and was regarded as "serious and honest" by his fellow judges.

Critics said he would be biased because he was born in Halabja, the Kurdish town where 5000 civilians - mostly women and children - died in a chemical warfare attack ordered by the former Iraqi president in 1988.

Some of his relatives were among the victims, although he lost no immediate family members in the mustard gas and nerve agent bombardment.

Rahman, 64, graduated from Baghdad University in 1963 and worked as a lawyer in the Iraqi capital and in the northern city of Sulamaniyah before being appointed chief judge of the Kurdistan appeals court in 1996.

A Whitehall source said yesterday: "Judge Rahman is seeking asylum because he and his family have been told they will be killed for passing sentence on Saddam Hussein.

"He feels he could never lead a normal life free from that threat, especially when US and UK forces withdraw from Iraq in the next few years. He, his two sons and a daughter, would then be completely vulnerable."

The Home Office has refused to confirm or deny Judge Rahman's approach. A spokesman said: "For obvious reasons, we never discuss individual cases."