Region | Iraq
Execution of Saddam aides 'near'
Preparations were being made to hang two of Saddam Hussain's co-defendants within the next few days, Iraqi media and a government official said.
- AP
- Published: 00:00 January 4, 2007
- Image Credit: AP/EPA
- Barzan Ebrahim (left) and Awad Hamed Al Bandar.
Baghdad: Preparations were being made to hang two of Saddam Hussain's co-defendants within the next few days, Iraqi media and a government official said yesterday.
An Iraqi government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Saddam's half brother Barzan Ebrahim Al Tikriti, a former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed Al Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, would be executed today.
He said the exact place and time of the hangings had not been set.
Al Arabiya satellite television and Al Furat TV, run by Iraq's major Shiite political organisation, both also reported that the two men would be put to death today.
Later, Al Arabiya said it could not confirm the report. And Mariam Al Rays, an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, called such reports "baseless".
Saddam and the two co-defendants were sentenced to death for the 1982 killings of 148 Sunni in Dujail.
An adviser to Iraq's prime minister said the person believed to have recorded Saddam's execution on a cell phone camera was arrested yesterday, He did not identify the person.
But he said it was "an official who supervised the execution" and who is "now under investigation. In the past few hours, the government has arrested the person who made the video of Saddam's execution," the adviser said.
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