Iraqi Hangings Bring More Condemnation

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Head of Hussein's Half Brother Is Severed
By the time the corpses of Saddam Hussein's half brother and another top official, hanged before dawn Monday, arrived in the village of Auja for burial, the word had spread among the mourners: The head of Hussein's brother had been severed from his body.

Many of the people who had gathered considered the decapitation of Barzan Ibrahim to be a calculated insult, another act by the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to humiliate followers of the executed former president and all his fellow Sunni Arabs. A doctor inspected the remains to assess the government's explanation that the noose inadvertently took off the head after Ibrahim dropped through the trap door of the scaffold.

"We knew that he would be executed and would join a parade of heroes, but Maliki, why did you behead him?" asked Salam al-Tikriti, 41, a relative of Ibrahim. "Why did you insult his body? Are you still afraid of him even after he is dead? We will cut your heads the same way that you are cutting the heads of the heroes of Iraq."

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The hangings drew criticism from abroad as well. The Moroccan Human Rights Association said they were a "criminal political assassination masterminded by American imperialism."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/15/AR2007011500401.html