Queen Mum Inks.LWC
Inks.LWC
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« on: January 03, 2007, 04:52:42 PM » |
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Probe of Saddam video release yields arrest
AFP/Getty Images
An image grab from a cell phone video obtained by AFP appears to show Saddam Hussein just before he was hanged in Baghdad.
By James Palmer, Special for USA TODAY
BAGHDAD — The person suspected of illicitly recording Saddam Hussein's execution was arrested Wednesday, an adviser to Iraq's prime minister said.
Mariam al-Rayes, a Shiite lawmaker with close ties to the Iraqi prime minister's office, said a security guard at Hussein's execution had been arrested and accused of videotaping Hussein's execution. The guard was not identified.
ON DEADLINE: Arrest made related to Saddam video
She called the taping and subsequent replay by Iraqi TV stations "an act by those working against the Iraqi government," and said the government also appointed a three-man commission to determine who shouted taunts toward Hussein as he stood on the gallows Saturday morning.
At a Wednesday news conference, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said the United States would not have carried out Hussein's execution in the same manner as the Iraqis.
"But that was not our decision. That was the government of Iraq's decision. This is a sovereign nation and they're going to learn from each thing they do," he said.
Caldwell said the military had no alternative but release Hussein into the custody of the Iraqi government once his final appeal against the death sentence was denied.
"We've only had physical custody of him, and so all we did is return physical custody of him back to the Iraqis, who've always had the legal custody of him," Caldwell said. "It's their system. They make those decisions."
The video, apparently shot on a cellphone camera, showed Shiite officials mocking Saddam just before he was hanged, inflaming sectarian passions in a country already on the brink of sectarian civil war.
The official video of the hanging, which never showed Saddam's actual death, was muted and gave the impression of a dignified execution.
The unruly scene was broadcast on Al-Jazeera television and was posted on the Internet, prompting a worldwide outcry and major protests among Iraq's minority Sunnis, who lost their preferential status when Saddam was ousted in the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003.
"We had absolutely nothing to do with the facility where the execution took place," Caldwell said. He said Saddam had been courteous to his captors and thanked the guards and medical personnel who cared for him.
Some of the last words Saddam heard, according to the video, were a chant of "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada," a reference to Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical anti-American Shiite cleric, whose Mahdi Army militia is believed responsible for many killings that have targeted Sunnis and driven many from their homes.
Al-Sadr's father was killed by Saddam. The militant cleric is a key backer of Iraq Prime Minister Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Saddam, 69, was hanged just past 6 a.m. Saturday at the site of his former military intelligence headquarters in northwest Baghdad. He was sentenced to death Nov. 5 for his involvement in the 1982 death of 148 Shiite Iraqis from Dujail.
At least 80 Iraqis died in bombings and other attacks Saturday that officials feared may have been retaliatory attacks for the execution, which was videotaped with a mobile phone and quickly posted and spread by Internet websites.But on Sunday the capital remained relatively quiet.
In Ghazilyah, a mixed neighborhood in northwest Baghdad that has seen recent Shiite-Sunni violence, U.S. patrols reported no clashes, attacks or demonstrations linked to the execution, said Maj. Daniel Rouse, operations officer for the 2nd Battalion, 12th Calvary Regiment, responsible for the area.
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