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Iraq launched a probe into a grisly video of Saddam Hussein's controversial hanging that has triggered angry protests from the country's Sunni minority three days after the execution.
As government officials began their investigation, thousands of Sunnis — many armed with assault rifles and rocket launchers — continued demonstrations in and around Saddam's hometown of Tikrit.
An official close to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said the inquiry would find out who secretly filmed Saddam's execution — apparently with a mobile phone — and then distributed it.
The grainy video showing Saddam being taunted by Shiite witnesses, including one who shouted the name of a radical Shiite cleric, has spread like wildfire on the Internet and between mobile phones since Saturday's hanging.
“There were only two people who had mobile phones inside the room. I don't want to say their names,” said chief prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon, in a televised interview. “They were senior government officials.”
In addition to the prosecutor and a judge, Saddam's execution was watched by masked hangmen, relatives of victims, a doctor, a Sunni cleric, National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie and a Maliki aide, Sami al-Askari.
The footage is more graphic than a brief clip released on state television, and the revelation of the sectarian jibes has contributed to a dramatic rise in tensions between Iraq's warring Sunni and Shiite communities.
“An investigation has been launched into who cried out during the execution, and into who filmed it and put it out there,” said a senior Shiite close to Maliki's office, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity.
In the two-and-a-half minute video, one of those present at the execution can be heard shouting “Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!” at a sneering Saddam as hooded executioners fit the former leader with a noose.
Moqtada al-Sadr is a radical Shiite cleric and the leader of the Mahdi Army, a 60,000-strong militia that US commanders say is now the most dangerous unit carrying out sectarian attacks on Sunni civilians.
Askari said it was one of the masked men who shouted Sadr's name.
“All of us were surprised. It was a terrible act,” he told the BBC.
“It will give a negative image of what's going on. We wanted to be careful and do everything according to the law, and then at the last minute this happened, one of the unreasonable guards started shouting bad things.”
That someone in the party executing Saddam should be a Sadr supporter has angered Sunnis, who look back on Saddam's reign with nostalgia and blame the United States and Maliki's government for the violence gripping Iraq.
The footage ends with Saddam — convicted for crimes against humanity in the judicial murder of 148 Shiite civilians — falling though the trapdoor of the gallows and dying amid shouts from the crowd.
On Tuesday, President Jalal Talabani, an opponent of the death penalty, also distanced himself from the execution. He said his approval was not required for it and he was unaware when it was to take place.
A spokesman for Talabani said he had “restated his opposition to the death penalty, but doesn't interfere in the independence of the judiciary, especially in the case where he doesn't have that right.”
The statement also quoted a letter from Talabani to the Iraqi cabinet explaining his stance towards the court that tried Saddam.
“I kept myself away from intervening in the decision of the special court, stipulating that Article 27 of the law founding this court confirms that its decisions are final and without appeal,” Talabani said in the letter.
The prime minister signed off the execution order on December 30, shortly before Saddam was hanged.
Emmanuel Ludot, a French lawyer for Saddam, urged the United Nations to open an inquiry into the circumstances of the execution, according to a letter obtained by AFP.
“We cannot rule out that senior dignitaries violently opposed to Saddam Hussein's regime could have obtained through a vile bargain with the occupying power the privilege of personally putting the condemned to death,” he said.
Many commentators in the Arab press say the footage makes the execution look like a sectarian lynching rather than an act of law, and have complained that the hanging should not have taken place during the Eid Al-Adha holiday.
For their part, Iraqi officials insist that Saddam died before sunrise Saturday, and hence before the official start of the four-day festival, traditionally a time of forgiveness and clemency in the Muslim world.
Protests against the execution continued in many Sunni areas of Iraq on Tuesday.
In Tikrit, armed Sunni men and women were seen firing in the air and marching. Police watched but did not restrain them for fear of reprisals.
Thousands continued to gather and offer condolences in tents erected across the town; some of the mourners had travelled from other Sunni areas around Iraq to pay their respects.
In London, the video of Saddam's execution was condemned as “deplorable” by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.
“Frankly, to get this kind of recorded messages coming out is totally unacceptable and I think whoever is involved and responsible for it should be ashamed of themselves,” Prescott told BBC radio.
Britain was the United States' staunchest ally in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
