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Iraq puts off hanging of Saddam
aides
...After the uproar over the
manner in which Saddam Hussein was
executed.
BY OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
January 7, 2006
Iraqi officials said on Thursday
that no date has been set for hanging
Saddam Hussein’s co-defendants, even
as the Iraqi Government strived to
play down the horror and disgust over
a video of Saddam’s hanging that has
angered Sunni Arabs and others
worldwide.
There were reports that the two Saddam
aides would be hanged on Thursday, but
a day after the United Nations
appealed to Iraq not to execute Barzan
al-Tikriti, Saddam’s half-brother and
former intelligence boss, and former
judge Awad al-Bander, an advisor to
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said no
date had been set.
Barzan and Bander were found guilty,
along with Saddam Hussein, of crimes
against humanity in the killings of
148 Shi’ite men from Dujail in the
1980s. The two were scheduled to be
executed along with Saddam on
Saturday, four days after their
appeals failed.
An earlier appeal by the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights Louise
Arbour not to hang Saddam had been
brushed aside by Maliki, whose
decision to execute Saddam on the
first day of Eid had shocked many,
both in Iraq and in the rest of the
world. Facing growing criticism over a
video of Shi’ite officials taunting
Saddam on the gallows that has angered
his fellow Sunni Arabs and annoyed the
United States, Iraqi officials
announced that a number of guards had
been detained as part of a government
probe to find out who filmed the
execution and leaked the images.
The video, which shows observers
yelling ‘Go to hell’ and chanting the
name of a Shi’ite cleric and militia
leader before Saddam falls through the
trap, has excited sectarian passions
in a country on the brink of civil
war.
Thousands of Sunni Arabs have marched
to vent anger at the execution in
Sunni Arab strongholds, and mourners
have flocked in hundreds to hisgrave
in his home village of Awja, which has
become a pilgrimage site for Saddam
loyalists.
Though the Iraqi Interior Ministry’s
investigation has so far centered on
the guards, it could implicate senior
government officials present at the
execution, dealing a further blow to
Maliki’s calls for national
reconciliation.
Prosecutor Munkith al-Faroon, heard
appealing for order on the video, told
Reuters that two senior officials had
filmed the hanging, refuting the
Government’s announcements that the
guards did it.
USMajor-General William Caldwell had
said on Wednesday that there had been
a lull in violence during the Eid al-Adha
holidays which started on Saturday,
but the US forces have been geared up
for a possible violent backlash yet to
come.
On Thursday, two bombs exploded near a
petrol station in Baghdad’s western
Mansour district, killing at least 13
people and wounding 22 others.
As US President Bush ponders
alternatives for a war in which over
3,000 US soldiers have died, there
were signs he is considering a
short-term troop increase in Iraq.
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