Saddam aides told to write wills before his death

Reuters

Saddam's Hussein's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bander were told to write their wills just hours before their leader was hanged last week, lawyers who saw them said on Sunday. Lebanese lawyer Bushra al-Khalil and Jordanian attorney Issam al-Ghazzawi said they saw the two top aides last Wednesday separately in their U.S. detention centre, along with ex-Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz and former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan. Khalil and Ghazzawi said the two men were surprised they were not taken to the gallows, even though they did not know at the time that Saddam had been executed. "The Americans and their Iraqi accomplices deprived us of the biggest honour to be executed with the President," Ghazzawi quoted Bander as telling him. "After the President there is nothing to live for," Bander told the Amman based lawyer. Khalil told Reuters she also met Tareq Aziz, a long time confidant of Saddam, who "cried and said nothing mattered in life any more because Iraq had been executed with the President's death."...

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