Reports conflicted on Wednesday about the date of executing Saddam's two codefendants for crimes against humanity in the Dujail case.

Both Saddam's half brother Barzan Ibrahim, a former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, are to be hanged on Thursday, Dubai-based al-Arabiyah TV reported.

The documents of the execution for both of them have signed and the convicts will be executed at dawn on Thursday, an Iraqi official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

The two codefendants are still in the custody of U.S. authorities, he said.

However, Sami al-Askari, spokesman of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, denied the news saying the execution probably would be held next week after the holiday.

On Nov. 5, a panel of five Iraqi judges sentenced Saddam and the two Tikriti and Bandar to death by hanging for the killing of 148 people in Dujail, some 60 km north of Baghdad after a failed assassination attempt in 1982.

Saddam Hussein was hanged early on Saturday on the first day of the four-day Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, or Greater Bairam. The move provoked anger among Sunni Iraqis who consider the timing of the execution as an insult for them.

Both Tikriti and Bandar were to be hanged after the four-day Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, or Greater Bairam, officials said.