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In the hunt for Saddam Hussein's billions, investigators have identified five networks of more than 100 companies used to launder money skimmed from Iraqi oil sales. Saddam's gangster regime set up shell companies in Switzerland, Jordan, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg and Panama, according to investigators. Those company networks and their banking affiliations were used to enrich the former Iraqi strongman, his sons Uday and Qusay, and other family members. "Ultimately, the money was stolen from the Iraqi people," said Taylor Griffin, spokesman for the Treasury Department, which is heading the government's laundering probe along with U.S. Customs, the Secret Service and various...

Excerpt - BAGHDAD, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Two of Saddam Hussein's aides were hanged before dawn on Monday, the Iraqi government said, admitting that the head of his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti was also ripped from his body during the execution. On the defensive after international uproar over sectarian taunts during the illicitly filmed hanging of the ousted president two weeks ago, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh insisted there was "no violation of procedure" during the executions of Barzan and former judge Awad Hamed al-Bander. But defence lawyers and politicians from Saddam's once dominant Sunni Arab minority expressed fury at the...

The execution of the two co-defendants of Saddam Hussein deferred to Sunday BAGHDAD - the execution envisaged Thursday of the two co-defendants of Saddam Hussein, his half-brother Barzan Al-Tikriti, former chief of the Iraqi secret service and the former president of the revolutionary tribunal Awad Al-Bandar, was deferred to Sunday, according to a close relation of Iraqi the Prime Minister. "It is deferred to Sunday", indicated to AFP Baha Al-Araji, appointed Shiite close to the Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. "Because of the international pressures and within the Arab world, the execution of Barzan Al-Tikriti and Awad Al-Bandar were deferred...

DUBAI (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein has been handed over by U.S forces to Iraqi government custody, his lawyers said on Friday, in an apparent step toward his execution. "I understand they have handed him over," said one defense lawyer who declined to give his name. Another lawyer said that U.S. officials had asked him to pick up the personal effects of the former Iraqi president who has been sentenced to death. "The American side called me and asked me to pick up the personal effects of the president and Barzan al-Tikriti," said Khalil al-Dulaimi, referring to Saddam's half brother, who...

The massacre in a Shia village whose residents had tried to assassinate Saddam Hussein will take centre stage in one of the first trials of the dictator's henchmen.Residents of Dujail, a small farming settlement 40 miles north of Baghdad, plan to testify that their village was singled out for slaughter by Saddam's half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, in revenge for a brazen attack that nearly killed the dictator in 1982. The reprisals, in which more than 900 people were rounded up and tortured, are described by survivors as the "forgotten Halabja", a reference to the Kurdish village where 5,000 people died in...

BAGHDAD, June 30 (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein, who brutalised Iraqis for decades, said good morning and sought to ask some questions when the United States handed him over to Iraqi justice on Wednesday, a witness said. Saddam, who was captured hiding near his hometown of Tikrit in December, looked in good health as he appeared before an Iraqi judge in the first legal step towards a trial for the cruelties he inflicted during his 35 years of power. "Saddam said good morning and asked if he could ask some questions," Salem Chalabi, a lawyer leading the work of a tribunal...