AMMAN, 18 January 2007 — The defense team of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his assistants yesterday charged that two former Saddam aides were “killed and tortured” and not executed as alleged by the Iraqi authorities on Monday, according to a statement sent to the media in Amman.
The Amman-based panel appealed to the UN secretary-general as well as international legal and human rights organizations to stage a “serious and immediate investigation” with a view to divulging the truth to the world and punishing “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 the Iran-backed Mahdi Army and the Badr Forces.
Officials said that Saddam’s half brother Barzan Al-Tikriti and head of the former Revolutionary Court, Awad Ahmed Al-Bandar, were executed at dawn on Monday.
Defense lawyers called on the United Nations to lead an international probe into what they described as “a brutal murder.” The execution “cannot be called an execution but a brutal murder that has nothing to do whatsoever with the rules of executions,” a statement signed by four Arab lawyers said.
“The decapitation of Barzan’s head cannot be the result of a hanging,” said the statement signed by defense attorneys from Jordan, Tunisia, Egypt and Iraq. “We doubt in fact that a hanging occurred and believe the decapitation was the result of a brutal murder carried out by criminals under the cover and protection of the Iraqi government,” the statement said. It was signed by attorneys Issam Al-Ghazzawi of Jordan, Wudud Fawzi Shameseddin of Iraq, Mohammed Munib Al-Jindi of Egypt and Ahmed Al-Siddiq of Tunisia.
Meanwhile, two Jordanians indicted earlier this month on charges of plotting “terrorist” attacks against US nationals in the kingdom pleaded not guilty at the start of their trial yesterday. Mohammed Shehadeh and Mohammed Al-Hotari appeared before the state security court and “pleaded not guilty when the presiding judge read the charges against them,” a judicial source said.
