Botched hanging in Iraq arouses Arab suspicions

Hardline Iraqi Sunnis have started using the term to suggest that the Shi'ites are not true Iraqis.

Issam Ghazzawi, a Jordanian lawyer who saw Barzan on Friday, said he was convinced the decapitation was deliberate.

"His head was cut off after he was hanged to mutilate his body in an a barbaric act of revenge that is against any human values and is vigilante justice by a group of thugs," he said.

At the hanging of Saddam, the executioners shouted sectarian taunts at the former president, who was overthrown and captured after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

The Moroccan Human Rights Association, the main independent human rights body in the North African country, said the hangings were a "criminal political assassination."

"The trial of Saddam Hussein and his aides by a pro-U.S. Iraqi court lacks the conditions for a fair trial and makes the verdicts unjust and their hangings a criminal political assassination masterminded by American imperialism," it said.

Yemeni bus driver Hassan Mohammad agreed in blaming the U.S. military presence. "Barzan is another victim of the American occupation in Iraq and the way he was executed shows how the Iraqi government is punishing (people) to avenge their rejection of American dominance and occupation," he said.

But some Arabs in the Gulf, where Saddam was not popular, said they were happy to see Barzan hang.

Ali al-Baghli, a leading Kuwaiti analyst and a former oil minister, said: "Justice has finally been done! ... (Barzan) committed a lot of crimes against humanity and at least he had undergone a legal trial."

"This is the rule of law... They deserved what they got. They cannot kill and torture without facing justice," added Mansoor Al-Jamri, editor of the independent Bahraini newspaper Al Wasat.