BAGHDAD, Dec 31: “The tyrant has fallen,” a witness shouted after Saddam Hussein dropped through the trap door of the gallows, his neck broken in an instant by the rope moments after exchanging sectarian taunts with onlookers.

Grainy footage of the execution, apparently shot on a mobile phone by a witness who was standing below looking up at the gallows, was circulating widely on the Internet on Sunday.

As the hangmen prepare him for his final moment, some of those invited to attend standing below the platform taunted the former president.

One man shouts `Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada’, a reference to cleric Moqtada al Sadr, who heads a powerful Shia political movement. “Moqtada!” Saddam replies, with disdain. “This is what we can expect?”

Another voice can be heard shouting: “Long live Mohammed Baqir al Sadr,” referring to the uncle of Moqtada al Sadr, killed in the 1980s.

The presence of Sadr's supporters among Saddam's executioners may fuel charges by Saddam's defence lawyers and his supporters that the whole process has been `victors' justice’.

Another witness shouts at one point: “Go to hell,” prompting an official to try to stop such taunts, saying: “No, please don't (say that).”

The video, lasting about two-and-a-half minutes, shows Saddam drop through the trapdoor while still intoning the Kalma. He was abruptly cut off in the second verse: “I bear witness that Mohammad...”

After he falls, the cry `The tyrant has fallen’ is audible over shouting and other comments that could not be made out.

The video bore out witness comments that the 69-year-old former leader, who looked calm and composed as he stood on the gallows in an official video broadcast on Saturday, had shouted angry political slogans while masked guards were bringing him into the execution chamber once used by his own feared intelligence services.

Towards the end of the film, Saddam's body is shown swinging, eyes partly open and the neck bent almost at right angles to one side. The film is punctuated by flashes, apparently as witnesses took photographs.

Iraqi state television showed a different video of the execution in which the exchange was not audible, and which cut away before the trapdoor opened.

But on Sunday, the bootleg version including the bitter final verbal exchange was spreading across Internet file-sharing sites, popping up on satellite channels and being sold hand-to-hand in Baghdad’s Shia bastion of Sadr City.—Agencies