[JURIST] Iraqi President Jalal Talabani [official website, in Arabic; BBC profile] said Wednesday that the execution of two co-defendants of Saddam Hussein [JURIST news archive] should be delayed "to see what the circumstances are," without offering any further explanation. Awad Hamed al-Bandar [Wikipedia profile], former chief judge of Iraq's Saddam Hussein-era Revolutionary Court, and former Iraqi intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti [GlobalSecurity profile; BBC profile] were sentenced to death [JURIST report] alongside Hussein for crimes committed in the Iraqi village of Dujail in 1982. According to an Iraqi government spokesman, the executions are expected this week [JURIST report] after being postponed [JURIST report] last week caused by "international pressure."

Talabani is personally opposed to the death penalty [JURIST report] and refused to sign Hussein's death warrant, but a panel of Iraqi judges ultimately ruled that the constitutional provision requiring a death warrant be approved by Iraq's president and vice-presidents was inapplicable in the context of the law governing the sentence handed down by the Iraqi High Tribunal [official website]. Lawyers for al-Bandar and al-Tikriti, meanwhile, are continuing last-ditch efforts to stop Iraqi officials from carrying out the executions [JURIST report]. Reuters has more.