Presiding judge Rauf Rasheed Abdel Rahman has applied for asylum for both himself and his family in the past few days, the Doha-based channel said citing a British official it did not name.

Al-Jazeera's London correspondent said Abdel Rahman had been in Britain since December on a tourist visa.

A spokeswoman for Britain's interior ministry declined to comment on the case.

"We won't comment on individual cases. We won't confirm or deny whether someone has claimed asylum in the UK," she said.

Saddam was executed on December 30 after being sentenced to death on November 5 for crimes against humanity in the murder of 148 Shiite civilians from the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, in the 1980s.