Former US Justice Minister Ramsey Clark, who supported the civil rights movement in the United States and later was part of the international team of lawyers defending Saddam Hussein, has died at the age of 93.
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The foundation and library named after the president he served under, Lyndon B. Johnson, tweeted on Saturday “
the loss of Ramsey Clark, a dedicated senior official and former justice minister
” from 1967 to 1969 Ramsey Clark died the day before at his Manhattan home, according to the
New York Times
.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel hailed the memory of an "
honest and supportive man who stood by our side in crucial battles and denounced the great injustices committed by his country around the world.
".
When he was Minister of Justice, Ramsey Clark had notably supervised the development of the “
Fair Housing Act
”, a series of laws against discrimination in housing and employment, and had opposed the death penalty.
Then he became a fervent critic of US military interventions abroad, from Vietnam to Iraq.
His activism led him to support certain controversial causes, thus joining the defense committees of several personalities such as the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the Egyptian Islamist preacher Omar Abdel Rahman.
He was also one of Slobodan Milosevic's legal advisers before the trial of the former Serbian president before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).