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Iraq executes two Saddam cohorts
2007-01-15
Saddam Hussein's half-brother and the chief of Iraq's disbanded Revolutionary Court have been hanged, two weeks after the deposed Iraqi dictator's bungled execution provoked worldwide condemnation. The head of Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti was ripped from his body during the pre-dawn execution on Monday, but an Iraqi government official insisted that "no violations" had occurred. Former secret police chief Barzan and Awad Ahmed al-Bandar, the ex-head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, were executed at 3:00 am (0000 GMT), Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told a news conference. Dabbagh said Barzan had been decapitated during his hanging, while Basem Ridha, an advisor to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki termed the "incident" an "act of God". "There was an incident that happened, that is the separation between the body of Barzan and the head. This happens seldom but it did happen and there was act of God and it was a normal process. It's happened before," said Ridha. In Amman, Barzan's Jordanian lawyer Issam al-Ghazzawi told AFP: "This is impossible. During executions, the weaker bone in the spinal column is broken." Asked if he believed that abuses had taken place, Ghazzawi replied: "Violations are expected in Iraq." The two condemned men had been convicted of crimes against humanity for the killing of 148 Shiite civilians following an assassination attempt against the then president in 1982. They were sentenced to death on November 5 along with Saddam, whose execution on December 30 was widely condemned for the way it was handled by the Iraqi authorities. Ridha told media in comments translated from Dabbagh's statement that "the execution took place in a very high (dignified) manner, there were no violations reported. "Every member of the execution committee signed a document to behave properly," he added in reference to controversy surrounding the death of Saddam. Mariam al-Rayis, another Maliki advisor, told AFP: "The executions proved that Iraq today is a state of law." But Ghazzawi said repeated requests to have a defense representative present at the executions had been ignored. Iraqi Shiites, who were heavily repressed under Saddam's Sunni Arab-dominated regime beat drums and sang in the holy city of Najaf after hearing of the hangings. They marched in the streets, some holding Iraqi flags, Islamic banners and pictures of top Shiite clerics. Ridha indicated that the remains of Barzan and Bandar would soon be turned over to their families, saying: "We will invite their families to take the bodies." A relative of Barzan earlier told AFP that "before he died, Awad al-Bandar also asked to be buried near Saddam Hussein," whose final resting place is in his home village of Awja, north of Baghdad. Ghazzawi told AFP the hangings had come as a surprise. "On Friday, we were in Baghdad where we met Barzan and Bandar and no one informed us of the execution date despite our request to have a representative of our committee present when the sentence was carried out," he said. The White House in its reaction to Monday's hangings said the Iraqi government was bringing "justice" to those guilty of crimes against the Iraqi people. "Iraq is a sovereign government exercising its judicial system to bring justice to those convicted for brutal crimes against humanity," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel told AFP. Britain restated its opposition to the death penalty, but a Foreign Office spokesman added that the two condemned men "were found guilty of crimes against humanity and the Iraqi judicial system has taken its course. In Rome, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, condemned the hangings, as they had that of Saddam. Maliki had said after Saddam was put to death that the government was determined to carry out the execution of his two aides, calling their hangings an "internal matter" of Iraq. A grisly video of Saddam's hanging made with a portable telephone and posted on the Internet recorded a member of the execution party shouting the name of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a bitter opponent of Saddam. The two-and-half minute film triggered angry outbursts within Iraq's Sunni Arab minority and from international leaders, who felt Saddam had been humiliated before being put to death. Authorities have detained the guard who shouted "Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!" at Saddam moments before the trapdoor opened and he dropped to his death.
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