Beheading ‘mishap’ at hanging of Saddam aides angers Sunnis

But defence lawyers and politicians from Saddam’s once dominant Sunni Arab minority expressed fury at the fate of Barzan, Saddam’s once feared intelligence chief, and there was also skepticism and condemnation of Iraq’s Shi’ite-dominated government across the mostly Sunni-ruled Arab world.

“The convicts were not subjected to any mistreatment,” Dabbagh said describing the beheading by the rope as a rare mishap. “Their rights were not violated. There was no chanting.”

Government adviser Bassam al-Husseini said the damage to the body was “an act of God.” During his trial for crimes against humanity over the killings of 148 Shi’ites from Dujail, a witness said Barzan’s agents put people in a meat grinder.

Saleem al-Jibouri, a senior Sunni Arab member of parliament, said Barzan’s body may have been weakened by the cancer he was suffering: “But we have doubts and we want to ask experts and doctors if it’s possible the head can come off,” he said.

Barzan’s son-in-law hurled a sectarian insult at the government on pan-Arab Al Jazeera television: “As for ripping off his head, this is the grudge of the Safavids,” he said—a historical term referring to Shi’ite ties to non-Arab Iran.

“They have only came to Iraq for revenge,” Azzam Salih Abdullah said from Yemen. “May God curse this democracy.”

The hangings took place at 3 a.m. local time (00:00 GMT) at the same former secret police base where Saddam was hanged on December 30, an adviser to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said. Officials tried to impose a media blackout for some hours but word leaked out.

Barzan, 55, was a feared figure in Iraq at the head of the Mukhabarat intelligence service in the 1980s, at a time when the Shi’ite majority was harshly oppressed, some like those from Dujail due to suspected links to Shi’ite Iran, then at war with Iraq. Witnesses in the trial said Barzan personally oversaw torture, eating grapes as he watched on one occasion.

Bander presided over the Revolutionary Court which sentenced 148 Shi’ite men and youths to death after an assassination attempt on Saddam in the town in 1982. With Saddam, they were convicted on November 5 and their appeals rejected on December 26.

Barzan is to be buried in the village of Awja, near the northern city of Tikrit, where Saddam was born and where he was buried two weeks ago, the provincial governor said. Barzan would lie close to Saddam’s sons Uday and Qusay, who were killed by US troops in 2003.

Shi’ites again celebrated in the streets of Baghdad’s Sadr City slum, a bastion of the cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr. His name was heard being chanted at Saddam on the gallows. A unnamed guard faces legal proceedings following a government inquiry into the circumstances of Saddam’s execution.