Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Bodies of Saddam's sons and grandsons exhumed
Saddam Hussein
In a sign of the persistent Sunni resentment that is behind much of the violence, the bodies of Saddam Hussein's sons and a grandson were exhumed and reburied near the ousted leader's grave in Ouja, his hometown north of Baghdad. Saddam was hanged on Dec. 30 and buried the next day in a grave chipped out of an interior floor of a building he had built for religious events.
Tribal officials said they decided to move the remains of Saddam's sons Odai, 39, and Qusai, 37, and his 14-year-old grandson Mustafa, who died July 22, 2003, in a gunbattle with U.S. troops in the northern city of Mosul, to keep all members of the family in one place. Tribal chief Ali al-Nida and three other relatives accompanied the bodies as they were transferred Tuesday in three cars from the cemetery about a mile from the building in which Saddam is buried.
The three bodies were buried in the courtyard near the graves of Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, who also were sent to the gallows in January for the killings of 148 Shiites in the town of Dujail in 1982. The five burial mounds were covered with Iraqi flags as people prayed next to them during the service in Ouja, near the scene of Saddam's capture by American soldiers in December 2003.
Tribal officials said they decided to move the remains of Saddam's sons Odai, 39, and Qusai, 37, and his 14-year-old grandson Mustafa, who died July 22, 2003, in a gunbattle with U.S. troops in the northern city of Mosul, to keep all members of the family in one place. Tribal chief Ali al-Nida and three other relatives accompanied the bodies as they were transferred Tuesday in three cars from the cemetery about a mile from the building in which Saddam is buried.
The three bodies were buried in the courtyard near the graves of Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, who also were sent to the gallows in January for the killings of 148 Shiites in the town of Dujail in 1982. The five burial mounds were covered with Iraqi flags as people prayed next to them during the service in Ouja, near the scene of Saddam's capture by American soldiers in December 2003.
Labels: Ali al-Nida, graves, Ouja, Saddam Hussein
