Saddam's sons buried, says Red Crescent
The sons of Saddam Hussein, Oday and Qusay, were buried in the family cemetery in their home town of Tikrit this morning, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society and the US military said.
Buried with the brothers was 14-year-old Mustafa Hussein, Qusay’s son, who was also was believed to have been killed in a fierce gun battle with US troops on July 22 in Mosul.
A military official said the funeral ceremony at the family cemetery was quiet and uneventful.
There were no outbursts of violence reported in the city.
Iraqi Red Crescent Society president Jamal al-Karboli said his organisation had taken the bodies from the US military in Tikrit. The military said it had nothing to do with the transfer of the bodies to Tikrit.
Al-Karboli said Saddam’s relatives approached the Red Crescent four days ago, asking it to act as an intermediary in recovering the bodies.
The bodies of the two men were being held in refrigeration at the US base at Baghdad International Airport where they were prepared for burial according to western – not Muslim – custom by military morticians.
The brothers were killed by American forces in a lengthy gun battle on July 22 in Mosul, the northernmost Iraqi city.
The handling of the bodies, including autopsies conducted by the military, had set up a controversy throughout Iraq. Muslim tradition calls for bodies not to be embalmed or in any way retouched and for them to be buried before sundown on the day of death.
The brothers faces were heavily restored by the US military morticians and western reporters were allowed to view them and take still pictures and videotape.
Those images were flashed across the Arab world by satellite broadcasters. The US military obviously was trying to convince sceptical Iraqis the men were dead.
Still pictures of the brothers released shortly after their deaths had raised doubts that Oday and Qusay were the men in the pictures.
The Tigris River city of Tikrit remains one of the least pacified areas in the country, sitting squarely in the so-called “Sunni Triangle” north and west of Baghdad, where remnants of Saddam loyalists have conducted a guerrilla war against American occupation forces.
If the pair were buried in Tikrit, the military sources said, it was feared the gathering for the interment could get out of hand, with a huge backlash against the big US troop presence in and around the city.
On July 29, in one of four audiotapes attributed to Saddam in just more than two weeks, the voice purporting to be the ousted dictator acknowledged the death of his sons and said he was glad they were martyrs to the cause of Iraq.
