Two former aides of Saddam Hussein will be executed on Thursday, five days after the former dictator was himself hanged in Baghdad, an official at the Iraqi prime minister’s office said on Wednesday.
Saddam’s half-brother and former head of intelligence, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, and Awad Ahmed al-Bandar, the former chief judge of revolutionary court, will be put to death at dawn Thursday, the official said.
”Their documents have been signed and they will be executed on Thursday,” he told Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity, adding that they remain for the time being in the custody of ”United States authorities”.
The two were found guilty, along with Saddam, by an Iraqi court for the massacre of 148 Shi’ites from Dujail village in the 1980s in revenge for an failed attempt on the then-president’s life.
Saddam was hanged on December 30 at a former torture centre in Baghdad’s Shi’ite district of Kadhmiyah and buried a day later at his home village of Awja in northern Iraq.
Barzan and Bandar were to have been hanged along with Saddam, but their execution was later postponed as ”we did not have time on that day”, the official in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s office said.
The Iraqi government wanted to complete Saddam’s execution on that day before sunrise, which was the moment that Eid al-Adha, one of Islam’s holiest periods, began.
The festival ends on Wednesday, following which the government intends to go ahead with the two executions.
Hot-tempered and secretive, Barzan was one of Saddam’s most trusted aides, while Bandar was indicted on July 1 2004, becoming the first judge to be tried for using his court to carry out political executions since Nazi judges were brought before the Nuremberg trials. — AFP
