Google CTV.ca - Iraqi authorities have arrested an official accused of recording Saddam Hussein's execution on a cell phone, an adviser to the prime minister said Wednesday.
The adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not identify the person.
But he said it was "an official who supervised the execution" and who is now under investigation.
"In the past few hours, the government has arrested the person who made the video of Saddam's execution," the adviser said.
Iraqi state television broadcast an official video of Saturday's hanging, which had no audio and never showed Saddam's actual death.
But the leaked cell phone video, which made its way onto the Internet, showed the ousted leader exchanging taunts with witnesses in his final moments.
After Saddam recited prayers, the guards shouted praise for Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric.
"Is this how you show your bravery as men?" Saddam asked.
"Straight to hell," someone shouted back at him.
"Is this the bravery of Arabs?" Saddam responded.
A sole voice was heard trying to silence the insults.
"Please, I am begging you not to," the unknown man said. "The man is being executed."
The chaotic scene prompted a worldwide outcry and protests among Iraq's minority Sunnis, who lost their preferential status when Saddam was ousted in the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003.
"It seems to me that the Iraqi government and the Shiite majority, which the prime minister is a member of, had to take some action because there was worldwide revulsion at the way in which the execution was handled," political analyst Mark Plotkin told CTV Newsnet.
"There were stories that the American government tried to delay the execution, but that the Iraqi prime minister wanted to do it because he was fearful that maybe Hussein would be liberated and then be used for kidnapping."
Outrage at the execution and the leaked video could in turn provide more fuel for sectarian violence, Plotkin said.
"And so they had to do something to show some contrition or some sort of role in saying that this was a mistake and that they had taken some action."
On Tuesday, al-Maliki ordered an investigation into the video and its circumstances.
There are conflicting reports on who may have smuggled a cell phone into the chamber where Saddam was hanged.
On Wednesday, an Iraqi prosecutor who was also present at the execution denied a report that he had accused National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie of being responsible for the leaked video.
"I am not accusing Mowaffak al-Rubaie, and I did not see him taking pictures," Munqith al-Faroon, a prosecutor in the case that sent Saddam to the gallows, told AP.
"But I saw two of the government officials who were ... present during the execution taking all the video of the execution, using the lights that were there for the official taping of the execution. They used mobile phone cameras. I do not know their names, but I would remember their faces," al-Faroon said.
The prosecutor said the two officials were openly taking video pictures, which are believed to be those which appeared on Al-Jazeera satellite and a website within hours of the execution.
The New York Times on Wednesday reported that al-Faroon told the newspaper "one of two men he had seen holding a cell phone camera aloft to make a video of Mr. Hussein's last moments up to and past the point where he fell through the trapdoor was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki's national security adviser."
Neither The Times nor AP were able to reach al-Rubaie for comment on Wednesday.
His secretary said the security adviser, a close aide to al-Maliki, was in Najaf and would not return until later.
Meanwhile Sami al-Askari, an aide to al-Maliki, told CNN it was one of the four masked guards who recorded the hanging.
Al-Faroon said there were 14 Iraqi officials, including himself, as well as three hangmen present for the execution.
All of the officials were flown to the former military intelligence facility by helicopter, he said.
The prosecutor said he believed all mobile phones had been confiscated before the flight and that some of their bodyguards, who arrived by car, had smuggled the camera phones to the two officials he had seen taking the video pictures.
Meanwhile, a newspaper report quoted al-Maliki saying he wishes his tenure was over and would prefer to leave the job before the end of his current four-year term.
In an interview published in the Wall Street Journal, al-Maliki said he would certainly not seek a second term.
"I wish it could be done with even before the end of this term. I would like to serve my people from outside the circle of senior officials, maybe through the parliament, or through working directly with the people," Maliki said.
"I didn't want to take this position. I only agreed because I thought it would serve the national interest, and I will not accept it again," he said.
The interview was held on Dec. 24, nearly a week before Saddam was hanged.