LUXOR, Egypt, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice slammed the way toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was executed, saying it "should have been handled with dignity."
Speaking at a joint news conference Monday with her Egyptian counterpart Ahmad Abul Ghait in the southern historic Egyptian city of Luxor, Rice said, "There is no doubt that this should have been handled with dignity."
She called for punishing those responsible for making cellular phone videos of Saddam's hanging on Dec. 30, in which he was being taunted by black-masked men at the gallows.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has ordered the Interior Ministry to launch an investigation into the leaked videos, which drew an Arab and international outcry that the former leader's execution resembled a mob lynching.
However, Rice, on a Middle East tour, added that Saddam's execution and that of two of his former comrades on Monday were the decision of the Iraqi government "made according to Iraqi law."
Saddam's half-brother and former intelligence chief Barzan al-Tikriti and the former head of the Revolutionary Court Awad al-Bandar were hanged earlier Monday in an undisclosed place in Iraq.
The Iraqi government said Tikriti's head was dismembered "in a rare case," but which forensic experts said could only have happened if the hanging was carried out inappropriately.
The London-based rights watchdog, Amnesty International, condemned the executions as inhumane and the court that sentenced them to death as unfair.
Saddam and his two aides were put to death on charges of executing 148 people in the Shiite town of Dujail following a foiled assassination attempt against the former president in 1982.
