Sunnis blast hanging of 2 Saddam aides
(AP)Updated: 2007-01-16 08:37
Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi said Monday he should have been consulted before the executions were staged, because he and the two other members of Iraq's presidential council - President Jalal Talabani and Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi - had asked for the hangings to be delayed.
The execution video was shown to reporters Monday in an apparent attempt to prove that Ibrahim's corpse was not intentionally mutilated after death.
Video of Saddam's execution was broadcast worldwide. But Ali al-Dabbagh, the government spokesman, said there would be no similar public distribution of the video of Monday's hangings.
"We will not release the video, but we want to show the truth," he said. "The Iraqi government acted in a neutral way."
Monday's video was shown to reporters without sound - as was the official video of Saddam's execution in December. But al-Dabbagh said no taunts greeted Saddam's co-defendants.
"No one shouted slogans or said anything that would taint the execution," he said. "None of those charged were insulted."
The official video of Saddam's hanging was quickly pushed aside by a second one taken with a cell phone camera by a witnesses and leaked to the media. It showed the gallows floor opening, Saddam falling and swinging dead at the end of the rope.
Some of those in attendance could be heard taunting the former Sunni strongman with shouts of "Muqtada, Muqtada," an apparent reference to Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric.
Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia is believed responsible for the deaths of thousands of Sunnis in the past year.
The unruly scene at Saddam's hanging drew worldwide protest and calls for Ibrahim and al-Bandar to be spared.
On Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saddam's execution was mishandled and said she hoped that those who made cell phone videos of Saddam's execution would be punished.
"We were disappointed there was not greater dignity given to the accused under these circumstances," Rice said during a news conference with her Egyptian counterpart in Luxor, Egypt.
A spokeswoman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday he "regrets that despite pleas from both himself and the high commissioner for human rights to spare the lives of the two defendants, they were both executed."
After Saddam's execution, Human Rights Watch released a report calling the speedy trial and subsequent hanging of Saddam proof of the new Iraqi government's disregard for human rights.
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