15.01.07

Saddam Hussein's half brother has been executed in a gruesome hanging which left his head severed from the body.

Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam's former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the leader of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, were put to death at dawn after being found guilty of killing 182 Shiite Muslims more than twenty years ago.

A government spokesman said: "In a rare case, the head of Barzan was detached from his body during the execution."

The manner of al-Tikriti's death will leave the Iraqi government - which was vilified for the botched execution of Saddam two weeks ago -open to further international condemnation.

According to a government spokesman the executions were witnessed by a prosecutor, a judge and a physician. All had signed a pledge to observe the proceedings with dignity.

The hangings, in the same building where Saddam was executed two weeks ago, took place despite an appeal last week from Iraq President Jalal Talabani for a delay. The Iraqi authorities were criticised worldwide after mobile phone images of Saddam's death, including him being taunted by Shia officials before the execution, were broadcast on the internet.

By contrast, today's hangings were conducted in greater secrecy and were announced by the prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon, not the government. He said: "The government called us before dawn and told us to send someone. I sent a judge to witness the execution and it happened."

The executions came as President George Bush led a White House media offensive to sell his new Iraq policy. Mr Bush, who faces Democrat opposition to his plan to sent 21,500 extra troops to the country, said failure would strengthen Iran and pose a threat to world peace.

He said he had considered the option of withdrawal but decided "if we were to start withdrawing now, we'd have a crisis on our hands in Iraq."

He added: "And not only in Iraq, but failure in Iraq will embolden the enemy. And the enemy is al-Qaeda and extremists. Failure in Iraq would empower Iran, which poses a significant threat to world peace."

The hard line against Iran came amid tensions between the US and the Iraqi government over the capture by US forces of five Iranians last week.

The American military says the detainees are connected to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard faction that is funding and arming insurgents in Iraq.

But the Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari called for the men's release. He said: "You have to remember, our destiny, as Iraqis, we have to live in this part of the world. And we have to live with Iran, we have to live with Syria and Turkey and other countries. So in fact the Iraqi government is committed to cultivate good neighborly relations with these two countries and to engage them constructively in security co-operation."

Thisislondon.co.uk

No great loss really, as for his decapitation there seems an accidental irony in that, considering the beheading by thugs of so many innocent people in that country.

Time the media stopped focusing on insignificant details and supported their tropps in Iraq.

Live by the sword - die by the sword. Or in his case by the hangman`s noose. No great loss to society.

Outrage as executioners bungle hanging of Saddam's brother

Through his black hood, Awad al-Bandar’s lips are still moving in prayer. Barzan al-Tikriti stands beside him, immobile, in an identical orange suit. The double trapdoor swings open. Both ropes jerk to a halt, but al-Tikriti’s body keeps falling, the empty noose swinging in the air.

Even though we knew what was coming it was still a shock: a judicial decapitation live on video. Just when you thought that every ounce of drama had been wrung from this ill-starred judicial process.

The last moments of Saddam Hussein’s half-brother and the chief of his Revolutionary Court are a gruesome piece of footage, showing what appears to have been a miscalculation by the executioner, one of six men in balaclavas. The Iraqi Government seems to have screened the film — only once, and only to a small number of journalists — to avoid the outcry that built throughout the day across the Arab world about Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti’s last moments.

London and Washington voiced dismay. Tony Blair’s spokesman said that the manner of the execution was wrong. Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, was disappointed that the accused were not given greater dignity.

Al-Tikriti, 55, was no stranger to violent and gruesome death. Head of the Baathist regime’s feared intelligence service from 1979 to 1983, he was found guilty of supervising the round-up and execution of 148 Shia villagers in Dujail in 1982 after a failed assassination attempt against Saddam. Witnesses at the trial claimed that he personally oversaw torture sessions, eating grapes as he watched one victim being brutalised.

Al-Tikriti, the five of clubs in America’s “Most Wanted” deck of cards, was captured by special forces in Baghdad in April 2003. Last year, along with Saddam, Judge Awad al-Bandar and others, he was found guilty of crimes against humanity. He remained loyal to Saddam to the end.


Al-Tikriti and al-Bandar were buried alongside Saddam near Tikrit

Yesterday the Iraqi Government appeared intent on preventing a repeat of Saddam’s execution, which was marked by mocking and hostile chanting filmed by onlookers. Rather than giving the condemned men special treatment, as Saddam had received, they dressed them in standard execution boiler suits and hoods.

Basam Ridha al-Hussaini, an adviser to Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, and one of the 14 witnesses, said that after both men declined to make a will or to pray they were taken to the gallows in the same room where Saddam was executed a fortnight ago.

This time no senior government officials were present and no mobile phones were permitted. Witnesses were required to sign a document promising there would be no ethnic chanting or insults. At 3am the convicts fell through the trapdoors.

The video of the aftermath shows al-Tikriti’s body lying, stomach down on the floor with al-Bandar’s body appearing to be hanging over him. On the floor to the right a few feet away, lies a shapeless black bundle with the head inside it.

“We put the head next to the body and it will be given to the families,” Mr al-Hussaini said. The two men were later buried in the same hall as Saddam.

Although the proceedings seemed more orderly than for Saddam’s hanging, there is no means of knowing if anything was said in the execution chamber, because the video was without sound. Iraqi officials say it will not be made public.

The distance of the drop was intended to ensure a quick death. Officials denied they had miscalculated, saying that al-Tikriti was heavily built and that such beheadings, although uncommon, did happen. “It was an act of God,” Mr al-Hussaini said.

But across Iraq and further afield there was outrage about the decapitation. Issam Ghazzawi, a Jordanian lawyer who saw Barzan on Friday, said: “His head was cut off after he was hanged to mutilate his body in a barbaric act of revenge.”

Timesonline