Hussein's half-brother, other co-defendant hanged
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Saddam Hussein's half-brother and the chief judge under his Baath Party regime followed him to the gallows early Monday, hanged for their roles in the killings of 148 men and boys after a 1982 assassination attempt, a defense lawyer said.
Barzan Hassan, the former chief of his secret police, and Awad Bandar, the country's former chief judge under the former regime, were hanged about 5 a.m. Monday (9 p.m. Sunday ET), said Badee Aref, a defense lawyer for several of the former regime officials.
A source in the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki confirmed the executions had taken place.
A close source to the Iraqi High Tribunal told CNN that both men were executed at the same location where Hussein had been executed and a building where Hussein's intelligence officers had hanged so many others. The men were executed at the same time, the source said.
Hassan and Bandar were sentenced to death in November for the executions of 148 people from the mostly-Shiite Muslim village of Dujail after an unsuccessful attempt to kill Hussein. Their death sentences were upheld by an Iraqi appeals court in December but delayed amid the controversy surrounding Hussein's Dec. 30 execution.
Mobile-phone video of Hussein's hanging showed Shiite guards taunting the Sunni former dictator on the scaffold, outraging other Sunnis and sparking criticism of the execution as a sectarian lynching.
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