Hangmen taunted Saddam with Shi'ite cleric's name

Baghdad, Dec 31: Saddam Hussein's executioners exchangedtaunts with the former president as they prepared to hang him, invokingthe name of a radical anti-American Shi'ite cleric whose father waskilled by Saddam's agents.

Grainy footage of the execution, apparently shot on a mobile phoneor other low-quality camera by a witness who was standing below lookingup at the gallows, was circulating on the Internet today, a day afterhe was hanged for crimes against humanity.

The New York Times quoted witnesses as saying one of Saddam'smasked guards shouted angrily just before the hanging: ''You havedestroyed us. You have killed us. You have made us live indestitution.'' Saddam answered: ''I have saved you from destitution andmisery and destroyed your enemies, the Persians and Americans.''

Theguard cursed him, saying ''God damn you,'' according to The New YorkTimes. Saddam replied ''God damn you.'' One video on the Internet,lasting about two-and-a-half minutes, shows Saddam drop through thetrap door while still intoning the Muslim profession of faith. He wasabruptly cut off in the second verse: ''I bear witness thatMohammad...'' He was also shown hanging, with his eyes open. The filmis punctuated by flashes, apparently as witnesses took photographs.

The new video bore out witness comments yesterday that the69-year-old former strongman, who looked calm and composed as he stoodon the gallows in an official video broadcast yesterday, had shoutedangry political slogans while masked guards were bringing him into theexecution 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 fatherAyatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr was murdered in 1999, probably bySaddam's agents. The New York Times said it was one of the guards whoinvoked Sadr's name.

The younger Sadr is now the head of a powerful Shi'ite politicalmovement and a militia, the Mehdi Army, blamed by Washington and SunniArabs for running death squads targeting Saddam's Sunni Arab community.

The presence of Sadr's supporters among Saddam's executioners mayfuel charges by Saddam's defence lawyers and his supporters among theonce dominant Sunni Arab minority that the whole process has been''victors' justice''.

Washington has urged Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to crack downon militias, but, torn between the conflicting demands of his variousallies, he has so far had little success.

Reuters

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