Saddam Hussein's half brother has been executed in a gruesome hanging which left his head severed from the body and which has stirred fresh fears of Iraqi violence.

Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam's former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the leader of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, were put to death at dawn after being found guilty of killing 182 Shiite Muslims more than twenty years ago.
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But despite efforts to avoid the uproar that marred the execution of the former president two weeks ago, news that the noose ripped the head from Saddam's cancer-stricken half-brother as he plunged from the gallows appalled international critics of the process and fuelled fury among Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs.

On the defensive after Shi'ite sectarian taunts were heard in illicit film of Saddam's execution, a spokesman for the Shi'ite-led government insisted there was "no violation of procedure" during the executions of his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and former judge Awad Hamed al-Bander.

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

Government officials showed journalists film of the two men standing side by side in orange jumpsuits on the scaffold, looking fearful before they were hooded and the nooses placed around their necks. There was no disturbance in the execution chamber - apparently the same one where Saddam died on Dec. 30.

Bander muttered the prayer: "There is no god but God."

Barzan, 55, a vocal presence during the year-long trial for crimes against humanity, appeared to tremble quietly.

As the bodies plunged through the traps, Barzan's hooded head flew off and came to rest beside his body in a pool of blood below the empty noose under the gallows. Bander swung dead on his rope.

Officials said they would not release the film publicly.

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.

Hangmen gauge the length of rope needed to snap the neck of the condemned but not to create enough force to sever the head.

Saleem al-Jibouri, a senior Sunni Arab lawmaker, said Barzan may have been weakened by the cancer he was suffering.

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 manner of al-Tikriti's death will leave the Iraqi government - which was vilified for the botched execution of Saddam two weeks ago -open to further international condemnation.

According to a government spokesman the executions were witnessed by a prosecutor, a judge and a physician. All had signed a pledge to observe the proceedings with dignity.

The hangings took place despite an appeal last week from Iraq President Jalal Talabani for a delay. The Iraqi authorities were criticised worldwide after mobile phone images of Saddam's death, including him being taunted by Shia officials before the execution, were broadcast on the internet.

By contrast, Monday's hangings were conducted in greater secrecy and were announced by the prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon, not the government. He said: "The government called us before dawn and told us to send someone. I sent a judge to witness the execution and it happened."

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.

An unnamed guard faces legal proceedings following a government inquiry into the circumstances of Saddam's execution.

After Barzan's hanging, Moussa Jabor in Sadr City said: "This is the least he should get. He should have been handed over to the people. Execution is a blessing for him."

Barzan was a feared figure in Iraq at the head of the 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.

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 Nov. 5 and their appeals rejected on Dec. 26.

Both are 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 told Reuters.

Muslim tradition dictates he be interred within a day.

They would lie close to Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay, who were killed by U.S. troops in 2003, not in the building that has become Saddam's mausoleum, visited by thousands of mourners.

The executions came as President George Bush led a White House media offensive to sell his new Iraq policy. Mr Bush, who faces Democrat opposition to his plan to sent 21,500 extra troops to the country, said failure would strengthen Iran and pose a threat to world peace.

He said he had considered the option of withdrawal but decided "if we were to start withdrawing now, we'd have a crisis on our hands in Iraq."

He added: "And not only in Iraq, but failure in Iraq will embolden the enemy. And the enemy is al-Qaeda and extremists. Failure in Iraq would empower Iran, which poses a significant threat to world peace."

The hard line against Iran came amid tensions between the US and the Iraqi government over the capture by US forces of five Iranians last week.

The American military says the detainees are connected to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard faction that is funding and arming insurgents in Iraq.

But the Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari called for the men's release. He said: "You have to remember, our destiny, as Iraqis, we have to live in this part of the world. And we have to live with Iran, we have to live with Syria and Turkey and other countries.

"So in fact the Iraqi government is committed to cultivate good neighborly relations with these two countries and to engage them constructively in security co-operation."

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