BAGHDAD, Jan 3: The Iraqi prime minister on Tuesday ordered an investigation into the conduct of Saddam Hussein’s execution in a bid to learn who taunted the former Iraqi leader in the last minutes of his life and leaked a cellphone video of his death to an Arab satellite television station and Internet site. One of the guards present at the execution was arrested on Wednesday.
The video contained audio of people taunting Saddam with chants of `Moqtada’ and of the former leader responding that his tormentors were being unmanly. It surfaced on Al Jazeera television and the Internet late on Saturday, the day Saddam was hanged shortly before dawn.
Al Jazeera said the video that it broadcast was exclusive. The pictures appeared on the Web at about the same time.
The taunts hurled at Saddam referred to Moqtada al Sadr, the radical Shia leader who is a main backer of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.
Sami al-Askari, a close Maliki political adviser, said the Iraqi leader had `ordered the formation of an investigative committee in the interior ministry to identify who chanted slogans inside the execution chamber and who filmed the execution and sent it to the media’.
The video was particularly inflammatory not only because the disrespectful chanting was clearly audible, but also for showing Saddam's actual death as he dropped through the gallows floor and then swung by his neck, his eyes open and his neck twisted dramatically to his right.
The video portrayed a much different scene than the official tape of the execution which was muted. It did not show the former leader dropping to his death.
Sadiq al Rikabi, an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, told the US-financed Al Hurra television that he does not know who leaked the video and that such an act `is wrong and should be investigated, and I agree that cellular telephones were taken from witnesses before they boarded the helicopter’ that headed to the execution site.
“I am full of hope that the results of the investigation will be announced, and the person who did this act should pay a price,” Al Rikabi said.
Munqith al Faroon, an Iraqi prosecutor whose job was to convict Saddam Hussein of genocide, was one of the small group of witnesses at the hanging and defended Saddam's right to die in peace.
He said he knew that `two top officials... had their mobile phones with them (at the execution). There were no mobile phones allowed at that time’.
OUTRAGE: Saddam's execution and the way it was conducted have provoked anger among Sunnis, who have taken to the streets in recent days in mainly peaceful demonstrations in Sunni enclaves across the country.
On Monday, a crowd of Sunni mourners in Samarra marched to a bomb-damaged shrine and were allowed by guards and police to enter the holy place carrying a mock coffin and photos of the former president. The protest took place at the Golden Dome, a shrine bombed 10 months ago.
Hundreds of demonstrators on Monday mourned Saddam in a Sunni neighbourhood in northern Baghdad. Some praised the Baath Party, the outlawed nationalist group led by Saddam.
“The Baath party and Baathists still exist in Iraq, and nobody can marginalise it,” said Samir al Obaidi, 48, who attended a Saddam memorial in northern Baghdad.
In Dor, hundreds more demonstrators marched to a dedication of a giant mosaic of Saddam. Children carried toy guns and men fired real weapons into the air. Mourners at a mosque in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit slaughtered sheep as a sacrifice. The mosque's walls were lined with condolence cards from tribes in southern Iraq and Jordan who were unable to travel to the memorial.
Sunnis were not only outraged by Saddam's hurried execution, just four days after an appeals court upheld his conviction and sentence. Many were also incensed by the unruly scene in the execution chamber.—AP