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Iraq launches probe into Saddam death video

Iraq has launched an inquiry into who secretly filmed ousted dictator Saddam Hussein's execution and distributed the footage.

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BAGHDAD: Iraq has launched an inquiry into who secretly filmed ousted dictator Saddam Hussein's execution and distributed the footage, an official close to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Tuesday.   

A video film 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 by mobile phone messages since Saturday's hanging.   

The footage is more graphic than a brief clip released on state television and the revelation of the sectarian jibes have 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, said.   

In the two-and-a-half minute tape, 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, prior to his hanging.   

Moqtada al-Sadr is a radical Shiite cleric and the leader of the Mahdi Army, a 60,000-strong militia which US commanders say is now the most dangerous unit carrying out sectarian attacks on Sunni civilians.   

That someone in the party executing Saddam should be a Sadr supporter has angered Sunnis, who look back on Saddam's rein with nostalgia and blame the United States and Maliki's government for the violence gripping Iraq.   

The footage ends with Saddam falling though the trapdoor of the gallows and dying amid shouts from the crowd. A close up shows his head lolling to one side in the noose after his neck is snapped by the drop.   

Many commentators in the Arab press have said 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 been carried out on the Eid Al-Adha holiday.   

For their part, Iraqi officials insist that Saddam died before sunrise on Saturday, and hence before the official start of the four-day festival, traditionally a time of forgiveness and clemency in the Muslim world.   

Since the execution, protests have erupted in many Sunni areas of Iraq.   

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