Anger, suspicion at Saddam aide gallows beheading

TIKRIT, Iraq, Jan 15 (Reuters) Iraqi Shi'ites, oppressed by Saddam Hussein, welcomed the hanging of two of his aides today though some also joined Sunni Arabs in expressing shock that his half-brother's head was ripped off by the noose.

Saddam's two co-defendants were hanged before dawn today, the Iraqi government said, but they admitted that the head of his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti was also torn from his body by the force of the rope during the execution.

In Saddam and Barzan's home town of Tikrit, a Sunni Arab stronghold north of Baghdad, a black banner was raised on the main mosque named after Saddam saying: ''The people of Tikrit mourn the two martyrs ... killed by sectarian hands.'' ''There is no way a head would be ripped off the body during a hanging. I'm sure they mutilated the bodies after they hanged them,'' said Ahmed Mustafa, a 30-year-old student in the northern city of Mosul, accusing Iraq's Shi'ite-led government of ''sucking the blood of the people''.

Clearly conscious of the uproar over sectarian taunts during the illicitly filmed hanging of the ousted Sunni Arab president two weeks ago, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh insisted there was ''no violation of procedure''.

Reference works on judicial killing do assert that decapitation is a possibility during hanging. But the admission that Barzan suffered such a fate sparked suspicion and anger, especially in Tikrit.

''People are resentful for the way that Barzan has been executed, the tearing of his head from his body,'' said Abdullah al-Jubara, deputy governor of Salahaddin province around Tikrit.

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