Barzan Al-Tikriti, Half Brother Of Saddam, Is Hanged at 55

Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, who was hanged yesterday at age 55, was a half brother of Saddam Hussein and had been Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva; as such, he was his country’s permanent representative to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights — a paradoxical role, given that he was also credited with refining Iraq’s Mukhabarat secret service into a sophisticated instrument of torture and repression.As head of the Mukhabarat between 1979 and 1983, Tikriti was said to have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqis; on a more personal level, he was accused of shooting one of his agents who had bought a duty-free bottle of wine without asking permission. He was also implicated in the massacre of 8,000 Kurds.Anyone outside Iraq who worked against the interests of Saddam was liable to become an object of Tikriti’s attentions. He controlled a network of agents that sought to undermine exiled members of the opposition and monitored the activities of Iraqi ambassadors abroad, ensuring that they remained loyal to Baghdad.He also masterminded sanctions-busting projects to enable his leader to get industrial and military components into Iraq. And from his base in Geneva with the United Nations in the early 1990s, he salted away billions of dollars in oil money in a network of undercover companies. A firm of financial investigators hired by the Kuwaiti government estimated that Tikriti had bought nearly $1 billion worth of shares in public companies in the West on Saddam Hussein’s behalf.Tikriti was born on February 17, 1951, one of four brothers born to Saddam Hussein’s mother during her second marriage. He was brought up by a shepherd whom his mother married after his father died. Tikriti claimed to have an M.A. in Politics from Baghdad University, although, since it was obtained after his family had seized power in 1968, there are doubts as to whether he actually earned it.What he certainly acquired, however, was a taste for expensive clothes, fine foods, and wines as he made his way to the summit of the state apparatus. He was on hand to help negotiate the end of the Iran-Iraq war; with Tariq Aziz (then Saddam’s foreign minister), he attended the talks with the Secretary of State Baker as the Americans sought to persuade Iraq to climb down before the first Gulf War. Tikriti also helped to recruit scientists to work on Iraq’s nuclear bomb.Tikriti was trusted sufficiently to be appointed “guardian” to Saddam’s son Uday, who was exiled after murdering one of Saddam’s aides. Uday flew into Geneva, where Tikriti ensured that his charge was chaperoned at all times by a bodyguard — an arrangement that ended when Uday, deciding that the bodyguard cramped his style, shot him twice, and was immediately sent back to Baghdad.Tikriti’s treatment of his staff in Geneva was unusual. On one occasion, he sent an employee who was suffering from a blood clot on a long journey by air and road, against the instructions of a doctor. When asked why he had done this, Tikriti replied: “You have to put pressure on where people are weak.”During his nine years in Geneva, Tikriti became a familiar figure at the city’s restaurants and lakeside hotels. In 1998 — shortly after his wife had died from cancer — he was ordered back to Baghdad, where there were rumors that he had fallen out of favor. Uday, who had been married to Tikriti’s daughter Saja, loathed him, and in 1995 had shot and crippled one of Tikriti’s brothers. In 1999, it was reported that Tikriti had defected and sought sanctuary in Abu Dhabi; this was denied in Iraq and in the United Arab Emirates. At one time, it was rumored that Tikriti was being favored by Western intelligence as a possible replacement for Saddam.By early 2000, however, Tikriti appeared to have been rehabilitated; and he returned to Geneva — only to flee Switzerland to escape charges of genocide. He was accused by a human-rights group of supervising an operation to kill thousands of Kurdish villagers during the Iran-Iraq war, and of taking part in torture and beatings. The Swiss refused to arrest him, but when they denied him a new visa in October 2002, he left Switzerland and returned to Baghdad.Tikriti was captured by American special forces in Baghdad in April 2003. (He was the five of clubs in the Americans’ deck of playing cards representing the most wanted men in Iraq). He was executed after being found guilty, along with Saddam, of being involved in the killing of 148 Shiites after an assassination attempt on the former president in 1982.

Barzan Al-Tikriti, Half Brother Of Saddam, Is Hanged at 55

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