Special Report: Execution of Saddam
BAGHDAD, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- Reports conflicted on
Wednesday about the date of executing Saddam's two codefendants for crimes
against humanity in the Dujail case.
Both Saddam's half brother Barzan Ibrahim, a former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, are to be hanged on
Thursday, Dubai-based al-Arabiyah TV reported.
The documents of the execution for both of them have
signed and the convicts will be executed at dawn on Thursday, an Iraqi official
told reporters on condition of anonymity.
The two codefendants are still in the custody of U.S.
authorities, he said.
However, Sami al-Askari, spokesman of Prime Minister
Nuri al-Maliki, denied the news saying the execution probably would be held next
week after the holiday.
On Nov. 5, a panel of five Iraqi judges sentenced
Saddam and the two Tikriti and Bandar to death by hanging for the killing of 148
people in Dujail, some 60 km north of Baghdad after a failed assassination
attempt in 1982.
Saddam Hussein was hanged early on Saturday on the
first day of the four-day Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, or Greater Bairam.
The move provoked anger among Sunni Iraqis who consider the timing of the
execution as an insult for them.
Both Tikriti and Bandar were to be hanged after the four-day Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, or Greater Bairam, officials said.
