Hussein may be hanged in a ‘day or so’

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 within “a couple more days.”

The former Iraqi president has been in U.S. custody in a cell at Camp Cropper near Baghdad’s international airport. He is to be officially turned over to Iraqi custody shortly before the death sentence is carried out, as ordered by an Iraqi court.

The execution could occur in “another day or so” -- before the start of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Iraqi officials have said their government would be loath to carry out an execution during the Eid festival, and have suggested that it would not take place until the holiday ends next week. The U.S. official noted that the Bush administration had been “in close contact with the government of Iraq” on Hussein’s fate.

As speculation rose that the execution is near, the condemned former president met at Camp Cropper with his half brothers Sabawi and Watban Ibrahim Hassan, both of whom are also in U.S. custody, said 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 Hussein’s eldest daughter, Raghad.

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

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

Fawzi said that during the two-hour meeting, Hussein asked about the welfare of the country and his family but made no requests and asked no questions, not even about his execution. “He wasn’t sad; he was very normal,” Fawzi said.

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

Hussein was sentenced Nov. 5 to hang for crimes against humanity in connection with the killing of 148 men and boys from the Shiite Muslim town of Dujayl after an attempt there to assassinate him in 1982. Two of his seven codefendants also received death sentences.

Dulaimi called Hussein’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.”

Elsewhere in Baghdad, violence continued to claim the lives of some of Iraq’s poorest citizens.

Bystanders pulled an 8-year-old boy from the charred wreckage of a marketplace where the poor come to buy used clothes and household goods, the scene of two of three explosions in the city that left at least 17 people dead, including the boy’s parents.

Vendors said the bombs, which killed seven people, were planted in wooden carts by two strangers who set up shop near the entrance and exit to the market and left just before the explosions. After the initial shock over the explosions, shoppers and vendors resumed haggling over underwear and socks.

“If I would go home, then what would my family eat?” said vendor Jabbar Shnawa, 35, who sold a CD after the explosion for 500 dinars, about 40 cents.

Across town, a bomb planted under a parked car exploded at 11 a.m. at a gas station where people waited to buy kerosene. The blast killed 10 people.

During the 24-hour period that ended Thursday, 41 bodies were recovered in the capital, according to the Interior Ministry.

Three U.S. Marines were killed in Fallouja by small-arms fire. They were with the 1st Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, a reserve group from the Midwest. Members of the battalion are among the final 300 Marines in Fallouja, where many patrols recently have been turned over to Iraqi forces. A U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb while on a combat foot patrol north of the capital, the military said.

The deaths bring to 2,991 the total number of U.S. forces killed in Iraq since 2003, according to icasualties.org.

The military also announced Thursday that soldiers conducted a raid Tuesday south of Baghdad and detained an Al Qaeda in Iraq cell leader suspected of killing two U.S. soldiers found dead in June, Pfc. Kristian Menchaca of Houston and Pfc. Thomas Tucker of Madras, Ore.

Meanwhile, audio from a videotape of four American hostages was made public Thursday by McClatchy Newspapers in which the security contractors and an Austrian plead for their release. The five were kidnapped Nov. 16 near the southern city of Safwan.

Lou Fintor, a U.S. Embassy spokesman, confirmed that the men were still being held and said U.S. officials were investigating the recording. Fintor said a previously unknown Iranian group, the Islamic Mujahedin Battalion, initially claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. He could not say whether the group was still holding the men.

On tape, the five men ask the U.S. government to withdraw troops from Iraq. They identify themselves as Josh Munz, a former Marine from California who was stationed in Fallouja; John Young, 44, of Kansas City, Mo.; Jonathan Cote, 23, of Gainesville, Fla.; Paul Reuben, 39, of Buffalo, Minn.; and Bert Nussbaumer, 25, of Vienna.

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Times staff writers James Gerstenzang in Crawford, Texas, and Suhail Ahmad, Saif Hamid and Said Rifai in Baghdad and special correspondents in Baghdad, Hillah and Kirkuk contributed to this report.