Saddam hanging may be near

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Saddam Hussein met with two of his half-brothers and his lawyers Thursday at a U.S. detention facility as a senior U.S. official said his execution could come in “a couple of days.”

Saddam has been in U.S. custody in a prison cell at Camp Cropper near Baghdad’s international airport. U.S. officials are expected to turn him over to official Iraqi custody shortly before the death sentence is carried out as ordered by an Iraqi court.

The execution likely will occur in “another day or so,” which would place it before the religious holiday known as the Eid begins in Iraq, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Iraqi officials have said their government would be loathe to carry out an execution during the Eid festival. The U.S. official noted that the administration had been “in close contact with the government of Iraq” on Saddam’s fate.

As speculation rose that the execution date is near, the condemned former president met at Camp Cropper with half-brothers Sabawi and Watban Ibrahim Hassan Tikriti, both of whom are also in U.S. custody, according to one of his attorneys, Bushra Khalil.

“He met with them, and he gave them some things. I’m not sure what,” said Khalil, speaking by phone from Amman, Jordan, where she plans to meet today with Saddam’s daughter, Raghad Saddam Hussein.

Saddam’s lawyers said they had not been notified of the execution date.

Saddam, 69, seemed in high spirits Thursday as he shared untitled poems he wrote recently and wishes for the Iraqi people with his visitors over lunch, said attorney Wadood Fawzi, one of those who met with Saddam.

During the two-hour meeting, Saddam made no requests and asked no questions, Fawzi said, even about his execution. “He wasn’t sad; he was very normal,” Fawzi said.

Saddam’s lead attorney, Khalil Dulaimi, said he does not expect Saddam to invite family members to witness his execution.

Saddam was sentenced Nov. 5 for crimes against humanity in connection with the killing of about 100 men and boys from the Shiite town of Dujail who were suspected of attempting to assassinate him in 1982. Three of his six co-defendants also received death sentences.

Dulaimi called Saddam’s trial illegal and politically motivated. He called on U.S. and world leaders to acknowledge that, saying that otherwise they risked alienating not just Iraqis, but the rest of the Muslim world.

“I would like to advise the American administration and President Bush: Do not make mistakes again,” Dulaimi said. “This is not advice from Saddam Hussein’s lawyer, but from an Iraqi citizen.”