2 former Hussein aides hanged

BAGHDAD — Two codefendants of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein were hanged before dawn today in a grisly execution that apparently tore the head off one defendant, an Iraqi government spokesman said.

Barzan Ibrahim Hasan, Hussein’s half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed Bandar, a former Revolutionary Court judge, were put to death in Baghdad 16 days after Hussein was hanged, amid a media blackout.

“In a rare case, the head of Barzan was detached from his body during the process of hanging and his family is going to be notified about this,” government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said later at a news conference.

Along with Hussein, Hasan and Bandar were convicted in November of crimes against humanity in the deaths of 148 men and boys from the Shiite Muslim village of Dujayl, in retaliation for an attempted assassination of Hussein in 1982.

Four others were convicted and sentenced to prison terms. An eighth man was acquitted.

Hussein was hanged Dec. 30, an execution marred by the subsequent release of a videotape showing Shiite guards mocking the deposed president by shouting the name of firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr as Hussein stood on the scaffold. The incident is under investigation.

Maliki’s government had said that to avoid a similar situation, it would not give advance notice of the execution of Hussein’s codefendants.

In political developments Sunday, Iraq’s president visited Syria and his foreign minister called for the release of five Iranians detained by U.S. forces, underscoring the divergent approaches of their government and U.S. officials toward Iraq’s neighbors.

Appearing on CNN’s “Late Edition,” Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the five Iranians had been in Iraq with the knowledge and permission of the Iraqi government. Furthermore, their office in Irbil had been offering “certain consular service for the local people,” he said.

“The Iraqi government is committed to cultivate good neighborly relations with these two countries and to engage them constructively in security cooperation,” Zebari said of Iran and Syria.

President Bush has accused both countries of aiding insurgents in Iraq.

“We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria,” Bush warned in a speech last week. On Sunday, the American military issued a statement saying the five men are members of the Quds Force faction of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which it described as an “organization known for providing funds, weapons, [bomb technology] and training to extremist groups attempting to destabilize the government of Iraq and attack” U.S.-led forces.

Both Iraqi and Iranian officials have called for the release of the detainees and have denied that the men helped insurgents.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hoseyni called for their release and demanded compensation from the U.S., according to Iranian TV on Sunday.

Iraqi politicians are keen to assert their independence from American foreign policy priorities. Their government has built extensive official relations with Iran through trade agreements and diplomacy during the last three years.

In November, Baghdad reestablished diplomatic relations with Damascus, which had been cut when Syria supported Iran during its 1980-88 war with Iraq.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus was the first such high-level encounter between leaders of the two nations in almost 30 years. Talabani, a Kurd who spent several years in Syrian exile, brought a delegation that included Iraq’s trade and interior ministers.

The visit is intended to “consolidate security and stability in Iraq and to strengthen the mutual relationship between the two counties on all levels including trade and culture,” according to a statement released by Talabani’s office.

“We don’t want our country to become a stage for settling differences between this or that country,” Labeed Abbawi, Iraq’s deputy foreign minister, said Friday. “We want Iraq to have a good relationship with its neighbors.”

Meanwhile, Iraqi officials reported that last year, 16,000 bodies were brought to the Baghdad morgue, according to Reuters news agency. If true, the figure would represent an almost 60% increase over 2005. The number doesn’t include those who were killed in bombings and other explosions, or those killed outside the capital.

Attacks continued across Iraq on Sunday, with more than 80 people killed or found slain and 20 others wounded. The worst of the violence took place in the capital, which was racked by running street battles, assassinations, bombings and mortar attacks. Among the dead were 40 people who had been shot execution-style, authorities said.

The U.S. military said a soldier with U.S.-led forces was killed Sunday by a bomb while on patrol near the center of Baghdad, and that an American soldier was killed by an explosion on Saturday in northern Iraq.

In the southern city of Basra, a military spokesman said a British soldier was killed Saturday.

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Times staff writer Saif Hameed in Baghdad and special correspondents in Mosul and Basra contributed to this report.