Two of Saddam's co-defendants await their delayed executions

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Two of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants were taken from their cells and told they were going to be hanged on the same day the former dictator was executed, their lawyer said Sunday.

But the two condemned men still await death as Iraqi officials decide how to avoid the kind of outcry that followed Saddam's hanging Dec. 30.

Also on Sunday, the U.S. military announced the deaths of five more American troops and at least 14 Iraqis died in bombings and shootings.

Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim and the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, Awad Hamed al-Bandar, were sentenced to hang.

They were convicted along with Saddam of involvement in the killings of nearly 150 Shiites in the town of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt there against Saddam.

Their executions were postponed, however, until after the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha which ended five days ago.

Authorities also decided to give Saddam his own "special day," National Security adviser Mouwaffak al-Rubaie said at the time of his execution.

One of Saddam's lawyers who met the deposed leader in his final days said over the weekend that Saddam expected to be put to death and considered it "the most beautiful end" he could have.

Now Iraqi officials must decide how to carry out a second round of executions in the face of worldwide criticism over their handling of Saddam's death. In the final moments of his life, Saddam was taunted by some of those present in the execution chamber as he stood with a noose around his neck.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair criticized the way in which Saddam was executed, his office said Sunday.

"He believes that the manner of the execution was completely wrong, but that should not lead us to forget the crimes that Saddam Hussein committed, including the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis," a spokeswoman for Blair's office said on condition of anonymity in line with policy.

Blair's likely successor, Treasury chief Gordon Brown, said Saturday that the taunting of Saddam during his execution and the release of an illicitly recorded cell phone video was "deplorable" and "completely unacceptable."

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has ordered an inquiry into the emergence of the unofficial video, on which Saddam is heard exchanging insults with his executioners and shown dying on the gallows.

In Amman, Jordan's Parliament also denounced the execution and asked God to bless Saddam's soul. The speaker of the lower house said Saddam's execution ignored the feelings of Muslims and Arabs because it came just before the start of the religious festival of Eid al-Adha.

While waiting for their own postponed executions, Ibrahim and al-Bandar have been mourning Saddam, their lawyer Issam Ghazawi told the AP. He said he met with the men individually on Wednesday in Baghdad, where they are in U.S. custody.

The lawyer said U.S. officials had told the pair their deaths were imminent on the day of Saddam's execution.

Ghazawi said Ibrahim told him the Americans took him and al-Bandar from their cells on the day of Saddam's hanging and brought them to an office inside the prison at about 1 a.m. They asked them to collect their belongings because they intended to execute them at dawn -- the same time Saddam was put to death.

Ghazawi said the two men were also told to write out their wills. They were returned to their cells nine hours later.

The lawyer said he has had no contact with the men since Wednesday, and had no information on when they would be hanged.

Jaafar al-Mousawi, the chief prosecutor in the Dujail case, said Sunday that the time for al-Bandar and Ibrahim's executions "will be determined by the government." Sami al-Askari, an adviser to al-Maliki, declined to give reasons for the delay and said only that "no date has been made yet" for their hangings.

Al-Bandar told Ghazawi that he "wished to have been executed with President Saddam," the lawyer said. Ibrahim "was in the worst condition. He kept crying over the death of his brother and said it was a great loss for the family and the Arab world," Ghazawi said.

Ghazawi, who served on Saddam's defense team during the last two years and says he has power of attorney for Ibrahim and al-Bandar, urged that their death sentences be overturned. The United Nations has also pleaded for a stay of execution for the two.

"Their execution should be commuted under such circumstances because of the psychological pain they endured as they waited to hang," Ghazawi said.

Meanwhile, Ahmed Saddiq, a Tunisian member of Saddam's defense team, said that during a Dec. 26 meeting with Saddam when he was still in U.S. custody, the former president appeared reconciled to his death.

"He constantly said the strongest, most likely hypothesis -- and the one that he expected -- was that he was going to be executed," Saddiq told the AP in Tunis. "He didn't stop saying, 'Don't panic. I'm ready for this moment and, after all, it would be the most beautiful end I could have."'

Saddiq also said Saddam gave his lawyers a poem "of tenderness, of love" that he wrote to his wife, who lives in Qatar.

At one point, Saddam told his lawyers: "'I am still capable of love, of being sentimental and attentive. That's my right. It's there perhaps the other face of Saddam Hussein that you don't know,"' Saddiq said.

In other developments, the U.S. military said three airmen were killed in Baghdad Sunday by a car bomb, a soldier was killed by small arms fire in Baghdad a day earlier, and another soldier died in combat in western Anbar province on Friday. A British soldier also died in a traffic accident.

At least 14 Iraqis died Sunday in bombings and shootings, including three Sunni Muslim shopkeepers gunned down in a busy marketplace and a Shiite cleric and his son killed en route to a mosque, police said. Twenty-three bodies turned up in hospitals and morgues around the country, officials said.

A new battle for Iraq's capital was under way with Iraqi forces mired in gunfights with insurgents and U.S. helicopters hovering over an area where some 30 people died in fighting the previous night.

The fighting is part of a military operation announced Saturday by the prime minister and intended to quell sectarian violence.

Iraq's parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the government's highest-ranking Sunni official, said Sunday he objected to the new plan for "legal reasons," and said parliament must vote on it.

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Associated Press Writer Bouazza Ben Bouazza contributed to this story from Tunis, Tunisia.