January 17, 2007

Amman - The defence team of executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on Wednesday charged that two former Saddam aides were 'killed and tortured' and not executed as claimed by the Iraqi authorities.

Saddam's half-brother and a former head of Iraq's intelligence service, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's revolutionary court, were hanged early Monday after they were convicted with the former Iraqi dictator of a 1982 massacre of 148 Shiite Muslims, the Iraqi government said. The hanging severed al-Tikriti's head from his body.

In a statement sent to the media the Amman-based defence panel appealed to the UN Secretary General as well as international legal and human rights organizations to stage a 'serious and immediate investigation' to divulge the truth and to punish 'the culprits responsible for those savage and ugly crimes.'

They also urged them to pressure the US administration 'not to hand over more Iraqi prisoners of war to the Iraqi government, which is controlled by criminal militias,' a reference to Iran-backed Shiite militias such as the Mehdi Army and the Badr Forces.

'The repetition of President Saddam's execution scenario proves that the two martyrs were killed in a brutal and ugly murder committed under the protection of the Iraqi authorities and collusion by the US occupation troops,' the statement said.

'The separation of Barzan's head cannot be the outcome of hanging which we doubt to have taken place altogether, but rather resulted from killing him and torturing his body after death by criminals who enjoyed the protection of the Iraqi government,' it added.

Video footage released after Saddam's hanging on December 30 showed the dictator, a Sunni, being taunted by Shiites before his execution. The scenes were condemned internationally and provoked anger among Sunnis.

© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur