Iraq hanged two aides to Saddam Hussein before dawn yesterday but government efforts to avoid a repeat of uproar over the ousted leader's rowdy execution were thwarted when his half-brother's head was severed by the noose.
Government spokesmen said the severing of Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti's head was a rare hangman's blunder. Critics said it may have been partly a result of Barzan's illness with cancer.
Many of the government's Shi'ite Muslim supporters rejoiced at the death of Barzan, Saddam's once feared intelligence chief who was accused of sending people to their deaths in a meat grinder. But voices in Iraq's Sunni Arab minority saw it as a deliberate sectarian act of revenge.
Government officials showed journalists' film of Barzan and former judge Awad Hamed al-Bander standing side by side in orange jumpsuits on the scaffold, looking fearful before they were hooded and the nooses placed round their necks.
The US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, told reporters the hanging of the two men was "an Iraqi decision, an Iraqi execution". But some countries in the EU, to whom Iraq is looking for economic aid, expressed disgust. The UN had appealed for mercy.
There was no disturbance in the execution chamber - apparently the same one where Saddam was hanged on December 30.
Taunting by Shi'ite observers at Saddam's execution two weeks ago - illicitly filmed and put on the Internet - outraged Sunnis. Although Sunnis are an Iraqi minority, they are the majority in the Arab world and view with concern the influence of Shi'ite, non-Arab Iran in Iraq.
The image of a dignified Saddam going to his death resonated among many round the region and thousands have flocked to his grave in his home village of Awja, near Tikrit.
Convicted with Saddam on November 5 of crimes against humanity over the killing, torture and imprisonment of hundreds of people from the Shi'ite town of Dujail in the 1980s, Barzan and Bander also had their sentences upheld by appeals judges on December 26.
When Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered Saddam's execution four days later, the two men did not go to the gallows with him - according to some Iraqi officials because of a lack of US helicopters to transport them.
The government film showed Barzan and Bander, unlike Saddam, appearing pale and trembling with fear as the hangmen placed black hoods over their heads.
Bander muttered the Muslim prayer "There is no god but God" but Barzan, a vocal figure in the dock over the past year, was mute with shock, said chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi.
As the two trap doors swung open, the force of the rope jerked Bander's head off. The head fell to the floor next to his body in a pool of blood as Bander's corpse swung above it.