Saddam aides told to write wills before his death

AMMAN, Jan 7 (Reuters) Saddam's Hussein's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bander were told to write their wills just hours before their leader was hanged last week, lawyers who saw them said today.

Lebanese lawyer Bushra al-Khalil and Jordanian attorney Issam al-Ghazzawi said they saw the two top aides last Wednesday separately in their US detention centre, along with ex-Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz and former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan.

Barzan and Bander, convicted for crimes against humanity in the killing of 148 Shi'ite Muslims in the 1980s, believed the instruction to write wills meant they were about to be hanged.

The two men are awaiting execution, but no date has been set yet.

Barzan and Bander told their lawyers they were woken in the early hours on the morning of Saddam's execution last week and moved to a nearby office in the top security US detention centre where they are held and told to prepare their wills.

Khalil and Ghazzawi said the two men were surprised they were not taken to the gallows, even though they did not know at the time that Saddam had been executed.

Saddam was executed on December 30 and Barzan and Bander were initially expected to be hanged the same day.

''The Americans and their Iraqi accomplices deprived us of the biggest honour to be executed with the President,'' Ghazzawi quoted Bander as telling him.

''After the President there is nothing to live for,'' Bander told the Amman based lawyer.

Khalil told Reuters she also met Tareq Aziz, a long time confidant of Saddam, who ''cried and said nothing mattered in life any more because Iraq had been executed with the President's death.'' Reuters PB RN2153