Saddam Top Aide Wishes He Was Executed

AMMAN, Jordan -- Two of Saddam Hussein's top aides were taken from their cells and told they were going to be hanged on the same day as the former Iraqi dictator, and they have been mourning his death while awaiting their own delayed executions, their lawyer said Sunday.

Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, were both sentenced to die after being found guilty along with Saddam of involvement in the killing of 148 Shiite Muslims in 1982.

Issam Ghazawi, a member of Saddam's defense team the last two years, told The Associated Press that he met individually with the men Wednesday at an unspecified location in Baghdad where they are in U.S. custody.

The lawyer quoted Ibrahim as saying that on Dec. 30, the day of Saddam's execution, the prisoners were escorted from their cells and told they were also going to be executed.

"The Americans took me and al-Bandar from our cells on the same day of Saddam's execution to an office inside the prison at 1 a.m. They asked us to collect our belongings because they intend to execute us at dawn," Ibrahim reportedly said.

He said the two men were also told to write their wills.

Al-Bandar and Ibrahim were taken back to their prison cells nearly nine hours later, according to Ghazawi. "Their execution should be commuted under such circumstances because of the psychological pain they endured as they waited to hang," he said.

Iraqi authorities had originally said the two would be hanged along with Saddam, but their executions were delayed until after Islam's Eid al-Adha holiday, which ended Wednesday for Iraq's majority Shiite Muslims.

Ghazawi said he has had no contact with the two prisoners since Wednesday, and had no information on when they would be executed.

The Iraqi government has insisted it will go ahead with the executions despite calls from the United Nations and elsewhere that it refrain.

Ghazawi quoted as Al-Bandar as saying he "wished to have been executed with President Saddam." Ibrahim, the lawyer said, "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."

On Sunday, new U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sent a letter to Iraq's U.N. ambassador urging the Iraqi government to grant a stay of execution to "those whose death sentences may be carried out in the near future."