Decapitation During Execution of Saddam's Henchmen Provokes New Wave of Sunni Anger

The execution of two of Saddam Hussein's henchmen and co-defendants tried for mass murder yesterday generated Sunni fury and international criticism when one of the condemned men was accidentally decapitated on the gallows.

The hanging by Iraq's Shia-led government avoided the sectarian taunting and unauthorised photography accompanying Saddam's death, with officials insisting that the executions had gone smoothly "without violations".

Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother and intelligence chief, and the former judge Awad Hamid al-Bandar died before dawn in Baghdad wearing black hoods and red jumpsuits of the kind given to death row prisoners in American custody, in which they had been held until a few hours earlier.

Selected journalists were shown graphic video footage of the hangings. Bandar's hooded head separated from his body as it plunged through the trapdoor in the execution chamber, Reuters news agency reported. "We will not release the video but we want to show the truth," said government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.

Like Saddam on December 30, both men recited the Muslim declaration of faith, "There is no god but God", before their deaths.

The executions were largely welcomed by Iraqi Shias and condemned by Sunnis, along the same sectarian lines that now define every issue in the country. Residents of the Shia holy city of Najaf beat drums and sang on hearing the news. But Barzan's son-in-law Azzam Saleh Abdullah told al-Jazeera TV: "As for ripping off his head, this is the grudge of the Safavids" - a pejorative reference to the Iranian Shia dynasty which fought the Sunni Ottomans for Iraq in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Khalaf al-Olayan, a leader of the main Sunni bloc in parliament, demanded to see the video.

Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president, had called for the executions to be delayed after the row over Saddam's hanging, and it was unclear whether he was informed of the decision to go ahead. Mr Talabani was away in Syria yesterday.

The two men were convicted, along with Saddam, of murdering 148 Shia villagers in Dujail in 1982 after a failed attempt on the life of the president. Barzan, 55, ran Iraq's Mukhabarat secret service from 1979 to 1983. Witnesses in the Dujail trial said he personally oversaw torture. He also served as Iraq's ambassador to the UN in Geneva. Bandar was said by prosecutors to have passed sentence on some of the men from Dujail after they had been killed and that they included under-18s who could not legally be executed.

The two bodies were handed over to local officials in Salahaddin province after being flown to a nearby US military base. They were expected to be buried overnight close to the hall in Awja, near Tikrit, which has become Saddam's mausoleum, and where mourners will gather.

Explanations for the decapitation of Barzan focused on grisly technical details - it appeared that the hangman misjudged the length of rope needed just to break his neck.

But reaction across the Arab world suggested this was seen as sectarian revenge rather than botched justice. The Moroccan Human Rights Association called the hangings a "criminal political assassination ... masterminded by American imperialism."

The US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said there was little American involvement. "It was an Iraqi process. It was an Iraqi decision, an Iraqi execution."