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Iraqi Group Given Bodies of Saddam's Sons
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BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military handed over the bodies of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s sons Odai and Qusai to the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, which will bring the corpses to their hometown of Tikrit, the U.S. Army said on Saturday.

"The Red Crescent will take them to Tikrit and from there somebody will hopefully claim the bodies," said Cpl. Todd Pruden.

The bodies of the two men were being held in refrigeration at the U.S. 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 huge and lengthy gun battle July 22 in Mosul, the northernmost Iraqi big city.

The handling of the bodies, including autopsies conducted by the military, touched off a controversy throughout Iraq (news - web sites). 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 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 in U.S. attempts to convince skeptical Iraqis the men were dead. Still pictures of the brothers released shortly after their deaths had raised doubts that Odai and Qusai were the men in the pictures.