Strange scaffolds of Baghdad

Saddam's brother was beheaded during a hanging

The execution pipeline in Iraq runs without long interruptions. Yesterday in Baghdad, associates of ex-president Saddam Hussein, who were sentenced to death along with him on November 5, were executed . Saddam's loyal associates outlived the ousted president by only 16 days. Yesterday at three o'clock in the morning Baghdad time, Saddam's 55-year-old half-brother, former head of the secret service Barzan Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti, and the ex-head of the Revolutionary Tribunal, 61-year-old Awad Hamad al-Bandar, were executed. They were hanged in the same Iraqi military intelligence building in the capital's secure Green Zone where their boss, 69-year-old Saddam Hussein , was executed on December 30.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the sentence was carried out "in accordance with the law, in the presence of a judge, a prosecutor and a doctor." This time the executioners made sure that none of the Iraqi officials and guards present filmed the execution on a mobile phone. A video posted on the Internet about the last minutes of Saddam's death caused outrage throughout the world, and even US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is touring the countries of the Middle East, yesterday was forced to admit that Hussein “was not executed with dignity and as it should be.”

But even during yesterday’s execution, an incident occurred, which al-Dabbagh spoke about with restraint: “During the execution of the sentence against al-Tikriti, the head was completely separated from the body.” Journalists were convinced of this when an official video showed how the former leaders of Iraq in yellow prison uniforms were led to the scaffold. Then they put black hoods on them. Then the footage shows corpses - al-Bandar hanging in a noose and al-Tikriti lying under the scaffold, with his head three meters from his body. There are suggestions that during the execution of Saddam and his associates, a special gallows was used, when a person falls into an opening hatch and breaks his cervical vertebrae under the weight of his body. Supposedly this way the victim dies faster.

Iraqi authorities explained that beheadings by hanging are rare but do occur. At-Tikriti’s family saw this as “particularly cruel,” and the deceased suffered from spinal cancer. But many Iraqis do not rule out that the body was deliberately violated, that al-Tikriti was slaughtered like a ram. However, Bassam Ridha, a representative of the Prime Minister of Iraq, cynically called this detail of the hanging “the will of the Almighty.” There are rumors in Baghdad that the executioners danced over the dead Saddam not at all like Muslims, but like pagans and kicked his body.

All this further aggravates the situation in Iraq. “The civil war will only intensify . And the methods of the new so-called government of Iraq, which actually controls little, do not differ from dictatorial ones,” said the former Iraqi ambassador to Russia, Saddam’s personal translator, Mr. Abbas Khalyaf, who now lives in Moscow. He knew both the former president and his two executed comrades and was not surprised that all three behaved courageously: “These are strong people, strong personalities, and they were convinced that they were right.” The ambassador believes that there is a reason that they are getting rid of the former leaders of Iraq so hastily: “The same Barzan al-Tikriti, as the head of the secret service, knew many secrets. And about Iraq's relations with the United States. And about the war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s." Mr. Khalyaf recalled that the current Prime Minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, before the overthrow of Saddam by the Americans in 2003, lived for a long time in Shiite Iran, like many other new leaders of the country: “It is beneficial for them and the Americans to destroy people who know too much.”

Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov also predicted yesterday that new executions “will add more problems to Iraq.” He advised the Americans to “have courage, follow the voice of reason and withdraw troops from Iraq.” The head of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, Konstantin Kosachev, believes that the executions “only increase the radicalization of sentiment within the resistance camp in Iraq.” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said that “the execution of two associates of the former Iraqi president, like the execution of Saddam Hussein himself, as we said earlier, does not contribute to stabilization.” The diplomat recalled that after the execution of Hussein, “a new outbreak of violence swept through Iraq, and dozens of people were killed as a result of terrorist attacks.” “We must look for non-violent options for solving the problem, not rely on revenge, but start a dialogue,” the Russian Foreign Ministry believes.

Ambassador Abbas Khalyaf, who called the executions “revenge on the previous leadership,” drew attention to Vremya Novostey that Russia has always called on the United States to “listen to the voice of reason and not start a war in Iraq”: “But Washington does not listen to anyone, so neither Moscow, no one else could influence events.” Yesterday, the list of American casualties in Iraq was replenished with two more military personnel and amounted to at least 3,020 names. Casualties among Iraqis, according to various estimates, reached at least 170 thousand people.

The bodies of those executed yesterday were already taken by their relatives. Barzan al-Tikriti may be buried in a cemetery in Auja, Saddam's home village, near the city of Tikrit. Nearby lie Saddam and his sons Uday and Qusei, who died in battle with the Americans in July 2003. In Tikrit, over the main mosque, named after the ex-president, a black banner was raised with the inscription “Citizens, mourn for two martyrs killed by the hands of apostates.”

Saddam and his associates were convicted of the murder of 148 residents of the Shiite village of Dujail, executed after the Iraqi president's motorcade was fired upon in the area in 1982.

Elena SUPONINA, Alexander SAMOKHOTKIN