Saddam Hussein's former vice president was hanged for crimes against humanity early today, the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein from power.
Iraq's former vice president. Photograph: Reuters
Former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was the third of Saddam's top aides to be hanged since the former president was executed in December after a trial in a US-backed Iraqi tribunal that was criticised by human rights groups as unfair.
The executions have done nothing to subdue violence that has engulfed Iraq since 2003, and some Sunni Arabs say they have exacerbated sectarian fighting that now borders on civil war.
Witnesses said Ramadan's body, wrapped in an Iraqi flag, was received as a martyr by hundreds of people in Awja, the town north of Baghdad where Saddam was born.
Gunmen fired shots in the air to honour him. He was buried near Saddam's sons and two aides hanged earlier this year, Awad al-Bander and Barzan al-Tikriti, outside the hall housing Saddam's tomb, as requested in his will.
Government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said the execution of Ramadan went according to plan and measures were taken to ensure there was no repeat of Barzan's botched hanging that left him decapitated.
Shortly after Ramadan was hanged in the early hours, a car bomb near a Baghdad police station killed at least five people and wounded 17 and another car bomb in Baghdad killed three. Mortar bombs later killed seven in southern Baghdad.
In western Anbar province, tribal fighters and police clashed with al-Qaeda linked militants near Falluja. A provincial official in Ramadi said 39 militants were killed, along with nine tribal fighters and eight policemen.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, accused by Washington of failing to stop fighters crossing the border into Iraq and of helping insurgents there, said his country had no interest in destabilising Iraq.
"It's not in our interest to have chaos in a neighbouring country, or to maintain it, because we will directly pay the bill ... Even years later, we will end up paying in one way or another," he told French television channel France 2.