Hangings in Iraq draw rebukes

BAGHDAD -- By the time the corpses of Saddam Hussein's half brother and another top official, hanged before dawn yesterday, arrived in the village of Ouja for burial, the word had spread among the mourners: The head of Hussein's brother had been severed from his body.

Many of those who had gathered considered the decapitation of Barzan Ibrahim to be a calculated insult, another act by the Shi'ite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to humiliate followers of the executed former president and all his fellow Sunni Arabs.

A doctor inspected the remains to assess the government's explanation that the noose inadvertently took off the head after Ibrahim dropped through the trap door of the scaffold.

"We knew that he would be executed and would join a parade of heroes, but Maliki, why did you behead him?" asked Salam al-Tikriti, 41, a relative of Ibrahim. "Why did you insult his body? Are you still afraid of him even after he is dead? We will cut your heads the same way that you are cutting the heads of the heroes of Iraq."

In many parts of Iraq, the executions set off new waves of anger and celebration along sectarian lines, though Maliki's government had gone to great pains to prevent the type of chaotic spectacle that accompanied Hussein's hanging two weeks ago, when Shi'ite witnesses in the execution chamber taunted Hussein.

Shi'ites celebrated the new executions, while Sunni politicians vented. Alaa Makki, a Sunni legislator, said justice was done but the manner of the execution was disturbing. "Everybody knows that when you hang people, rarely the head will be decapitated from the body," he said, criticizing what he called a "revenge on the body."

"It denotes that people are very reactive and very extremist and they want revenge," he said.

Hussein al-Falluji, another Sunni legislator, called the executions "illegitimate and illegal."

The hangings drew criticism from abroad as well. The Moroccan Human Rights Association said they were a "criminal political assassination masterminded by American imperialism."

A United Nations spokesman expressed regret that Secretary General Ban Ki Moon's request to spare the lives of the two men was not granted. Josi Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, the European Union's executive arm, said after the hangings that he would back an Italian initiative for a worldwide moratorium on capital punishment under UN auspices.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, visiting Egypt, said she believed the hangings of Hussein and the two others were mishandled and should have been carried out with "greater dignity."

Ibrahim, who ran Hussein's intelligence service, or Mukhabarat, and Awad Haman al-Bandar, leader of Hussein's Revolutionary Court, were hanged at 3 a.m. yesterday, government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said. They had been sentenced to death for their role in the killings of 148 men and boys from the Shi'ite village of Dujail after an assassination attempt against Hussein in 1982.

Iraqi officials said the decapitation was not intentional. They said Ibrahim's neck had been unable to absorb the noose's force. Dabbagh described it as a "rare incident" in a hanging and said the proceeding was marked by professionalism and restraint not shown during Hussein's execution.

For yesterday's hangings, the Iraqi government restricted the witnesses to a judge, a prosecutor, a doctor, a prison warden, and representatives of the Interior Ministry and the prime minister's office, Dabbagh said. They made the attendees sign documents pledging they would not misbehave, Dabbagh added.

"Everyone obeyed the instructions of the government; no violation, chant, slogans or words that would harm the execution of this verdict was registered," he said.

Iraqi officials showed silent video clips of the hangings to reporters but did not release the footage to the public.

According to an Associated Press account of the video, the two defendants appeared side by side at the gallows wearing red prison jumpsuits. They were surrounded by five masked men and black hoods were placed over their heads.

After the trap doors beneath them opened, Bandar dangled from the rope, but the shock of the rope going taut severed Ibrahim's head from his body, both of which fell to the floor, the news service reported.

By 6 p.m., the bodies had arrived in Ouja, about 100 miles north of Baghdad, and were greeted by more than 1,000 people. The crowd carried the corpses, wrapped in Iraqi flags, on their shoulders into a hall as chants rang out of "Allahu akbar" -- "God is greatest" -- and guns were fired into the air.

The bodies were washed and wrapped in white shrouds before being buried in a garden plot next to the hall that houses Hussein's grave. The crowd surrounded the bodies, and the sound of crying mixed with chanted praises to God.

"We are so proud that [Bandar] died as a martyr defending his beliefs," said Abdulla al-Sadoon, 55, a relative of Bandar from Basra. "It is a proud thing to die like this."

Yesterday's hangings came as a suicide car bomber slammed into an Iraqi Army patrol in the northern city of Mosul, killing seven people and wounding 40 others, police said. A total of at least 55 people were killed or found dead across Iraq, authorities said.

The US military, meanwhile, announced the deaths of two more soldiers, both killed in Baghdad.

Also yesterday, two top outgoing US officials in Iraq, General George W. Casey Jr. and US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, said they were optimistic about the new plan to secure Baghdad. They said they sensed a deeper commitment by the Iraqi government to combat Sunni and Shi'ite extremists who are fighting in the capital.

The Shi'ite-led Iraqi security forces have been widely accused of operating death squads that target Sunnis while allowing Shi'ite militias in the capital free rein. But Casey said he did not expect to see significant improvement in Baghdad's security until the summer or fall.

Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.