Region | Iraq
Profiles of Barzan and Awad
The following are brief profiles of the two men, who were sentenced in the killing of 148 Shiites from Dujail in the 1980s.
- Agencies
- Published: 00:00 January 15, 2007
- Image Credit:
- Barzan Ebrahim Hassan Al Tikriti (right), and Awad Ahmed Al Bandar Al Sadun were hanged in Baghdad at dawn on Monday.
The following are brief profiles of the two men, who were sentenced in the killing of 148 Shiites from Dujail in the 1980s.
Barzan Ebrahim Hassan Al Tikriti:
Saddam's half-brother, 14 years his junior, Barzan was head of the feared Mukhabarat intelligence service from 1979 to 1983. Witnesses in the trial said he personally oversaw torture, eating grapes as he watched on one occasion, and had a meat grinder for human flesh at his interrogation facility.
He was Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva from 1988 to 1997, where he is remembered as an elegantly-suited man dubbed "Saddam's banker in the West".
Barzan was captured by US special forces in Baghdad in April 2003. He was the five of clubs in a US deck of playing cards representing the most wanted men in Iraq.
As intelligence chief, Barzan was accused of ordering mass murder and torture, and of personally taking part in human rights abuses, including the destruction of Kurdish villages.
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Barzan's then teenage eldest daughter married Saddam's playboy eldest son Uday in 1993, though Uday later rejected her and sent her back to her father.
Barzan, believed to be aged 55 at his death, was suffering from cancer but that did not stop him mounting spirited attacks on the court and its US backers.
Taking the stand in his own defence last March, he said Saddam had a right to punish those who tried to kill him, but denied any part in the reprisals, saying: "My hands are as clean as Moses' hands. I have no blood on my hands."
Awad Ahmed Al Bandar Al Sadun:
Bander, aged around 61, was a former chief judge in Saddam's Revolutionary Court, which was accused of organising show trials that often led to summary executions.
Bander was the judge in charge of trying many of the 148 Shiite men killed after a failed assassination bid on Saddam in 1982.
Prosecutors said he sentenced some of the men from Dujail after they had already been killed, and that among those sentenced were under-18s who could not legally be executed.
Bander's defence lawyer was abducted from his office and killed the day after the trial started.
When the trial opened in October 2005, Bander, in a plain white traditional robe, sat at Saddam's right hand in the court, loudly demanding and then donning a chequered Arab headdress as proceedings got under way.
He sat quietly throughout most of the court sessions, though always quick to back up Saddam and Barzan in their frequent battles of will with the judge.
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