Baghdad: Saddam Hussein's executioners exchanged taunts with the former president as they prepared to hang him, invoking the name of a radical anti-American Shia cleric whose father was killed by Saddam's agents.
Grainy footage of the execution, apparently shot on a mobile phone or other low-quality camera by a witness who was standing below looking up at the gallows, was circulating on the Internet on Sunday, a day after he was hanged for crimes against humanity.
The New York Times quoted witnesses as saying that one of Saddam's masked guards shouted angrily just before the hanging: "You have destroyed us. You have killed us. You have made us live in destitution."
Saddam answered: "I have saved you from destitution and misery and destroyed your enemies, the Persians and Americans." The guard cursed him, saying "God damn you," according to The New York Times. Saddam replied: "God damn you."
One video on the Internet, lasting about two-and-a-half minutes, shows Saddam drop through the trap door while still intoning the Muslim profession of faith. He was abruptly cut off in the second verse: "I bear witness that Mohammad..."
He was also shown hanging, with his eyes open. The film is punctuated by flashes, apparently as witnesses took photographs. The new video bore out witness comments on Saturday that the 69-year-old former strongman, 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.
At one point a voice is heard shouting "Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada," a reference to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose father Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr was murdered in 1999, probably by Saddam's agents. The New York Times said it was one of the guards who invoked Sadr's name.
The younger Sadr is now the head of a powerful Shia political movement and a militia, the Mehdi Army, blamed by Washington and Sunni Arabs for running death squads targeting Saddam's Sunni Arab community. The presence of Sadr's supporters among Saddam's executioners may fuel charges by Saddam's defence lawyers and his supporters among the once dominant Sunni Arab minority that the whole process has been 'victors' justice'.
Washington has urged Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to crack down on militias, but torn between the conflicting demands of his various allies, he has so far had little success.
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