Iraq investigates Saddam footage
The Iraqi government has launched an inquiry into unofficial mobile phone footage showing the execution of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
The mobile phone footage showed he exchanged taunts and insults with witnesses at his hanging on Saturday.
The grainy video showed the former leader being told to “go to hell” by someone attending the hanging.
UK Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said the circumstances of the execution were “deplorable”.
The Iraqi authorities fear the footage, released on the internet hours after the execution, could contribute to a dramatic rise in sectarian tensions between Iraq’s Sunni and Shia communities.
“There were a few guards who shouted slogans that were inappropriate and that’s now the subject of a government investigation,” an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, Sami al-Askari, told Reuters news agency.
The BBC’s Peter Greste, in Baghdad, says Iraq’s government is desperate to clear the air, having hoped that the execution would signal the start of the reconciliation process between the Sunni and Shia communities.
Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on 5 November over the killings of 148 Shias from the town of Dujail in the 1980s.
He was executed before dawn on Saturday in Baghdad and buried near his hometown of Tikrit a day later.
The daily cycle of violence in Iraq has continued since the execution.
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Three people died and seven others were wounded when a bomb hidden in a pile of rubbish exploded in a mixed Sunni-Shia area of Baghdad.
The Iraq authorities released official footage of Saddam Hussein’s execution, to prove to the public that he was really dead.
But that film did not include any sound and did not show the actual moment of death.
The grainy mobile phone footage that emerged hours later was shot from below the gallows.
As Saddam Hussein is led towards the trapdoor, one of the unseen observers shouts “go to hell”.
Others can be heard chanting the name of Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr and of Muhammad Sadiq Sadr, his father who was murdered by Saddam Hussein’s agents.
In response Saddam Hussein is sarcastic, asking “do you consider this bravery?”
In a BBC interview, John Prescott called it “deplorable” and “totally unacceptable” that video clips of the execution had surfaced on the internet.
Mr Prescott is in charge while Prime Minister Tony Blair is on holiday.
“I think the manner was quite deplorable really,” he said. “I don’t think one can endorse in any way that, whatever your views about capital punishment.
“Frankly, to get the kind of recorded messages coming out is totally unacceptable, and I think whoever was involved and responsible for it should be ashamed of themselves.”