News that two former aides to Saddam Hussein were hanged today continued the grisly sequence of hangings with reports that the head of Saddam’s half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti was ripped from his body during the execution.
Barzan was the once-feared intelligence chief and Awad Ahmed al-Bandar, the former head of the revolutionary court, were executed in the early hours of Monday.
The two had been found guilty of crimes against humanity for the killing of 148 Shiites from the village of Dujail in 1980s.
They were sentenced to death on November 5 by a special court along with Saddam, whose execution on December 30.
“The convicts were not subjected to any mistreatment,” an Iraqi official said, describing the beheading by the rope as a rare mishap. “Their rights were not violated. There was no chanting.”
