Barzan Ibrahim AP PHOTO

A thickset Barzan Ibrahim on Jan. 15 plunged through the trap door and was beheaded by the jerk of the thick beige rope at the end of his fall, in the same execution chamber where Saddam was hanged 16 days earlier.

A government video of the hanging, played at a briefing for reporters, showed Ibrahim's body passing the camera in a blur. The body came to rest on its chest while the severed head lay a few meters away, still wearing the black hood pulled on moments before.

The decapitation appeared inadvertent, and Iraqi officials seemed anxious to prove they had not mutilated Ibrahim's remains.

The hangings came as a suicide car bomber slammed into an Iraqi army patrol in the city of Mosul Jan. 15, killing seven people and wounding 40 others, police said. A total of at least 55 people were killed or found dead across Iraq.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, announced the deaths of two more soldiers, both killed in Baghdad.

While Ibrahim's body was wrenched apart by the execution, his co-defendant, Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Saddam's Revolutionary court, died as expected. Both men met death at 3 a.m.

The Japan Times Weekly: Jan. 20, 2007
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