Posted on 01/03/2007 6:33:01 AM PST by TexKat
An adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki today said the person who made the leaked video of Saddam Hussein’s hanging had been detained.
The adviser, who requested anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media, did not identify the person.
“In the past few hours, the government has arrested the person who made the video of Saddam’s execution,” the adviser said.
“He was an official who supervised the execution and now he is under investigation.”
An Iraqi prosecutor who was present for Saddam Hussein’s execution denied on Wednesday a report that he had accused the country’s national security adviser of possible responsibility for the leaked video of the former dictator being hanged.
“I am not accusing Mowaffak al-Rubaie (the national security adviser), and I did not see him taking pictures,” Munqith al-Faroon, an Iraqi prosecutor in the case that sent Saddam to the gallows, told The Associated Press.
“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 in a telephone interview.
The prosecutor said the two officials were openly taking video pictures, which are believed to be those which appeared on Al-Jazeera satellite television and a website within hours of Saddam’s death by hanging shortly before dawn on Saturday.
The New York Times today 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”.
The Times said it had been unable to reach al-Rubaie for comment. AP also could not reach him Wednesday. His secretary said the security adviser, a close aide to al-Maliki, was in Najaf and would not return until later.
Al-Faroon said there were 14 Iraqi officials, including himself and another prosecutor, as well as three hangmen present for the execution.
All the officials, he said, were flown by US helicopter to the former military intelligence facility where Saddam was put to death in an execution chamber used by his own security men for years.
The prosecutor said he believed all mobile phones had been confiscated before the flight and that some of the officials’ bodyguards, who arrived by car, had smuggled the camera phones to the two officials he had seen taking the video pictures.
Al-Malaki yesterday ordered his Interior Ministry to investigate who the video - who took it and how it reached television and websites for public viewing.
The photos showed an ugly scene in Saddam’s last moments of life, with taunts and cries of: “Go to hell!” called out before he dropped through the gallows floor and swung dead at the end of a rope.
Al-Faroon quoted Saddam as responding: “We go to heaven and you go to hell”.
The official video of the hanging, which never showed Saddam’s actual death, was muted and gave the impression of a dignified execution.
That tape was broadcast worldwide in the hours immediately after Saddam was hanged, but quickly overshadowed when the unofficial video reach the public.
The unruly scene has prompted a worldwide outcry and big protests among Iraq’s minority Sunnis, who lost their preferential status when Saddam was ousted in the US-led invasion of March 2003.
Some of the last words Saddam heard, according to the leaked cell phone 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 of this year’s wave of 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 al-Maliki backer.
Saddam execution supervisor arrested ping!
I think it puts to rest that Saddam was actually executed. Think of the conspiracy theories that would have blossomed had we not seen the real deal.
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.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070103/saddam_codefendants_070103/20070103?hub=TopStories
Even more chilling than the actions of Saddam’s guards is the thought that without the escape of this amateur video we would still be in the dark about what really happened, and about the true and apparently now official nature of the sectarian forces driving Iraq.
In that we must be thankful for the truth, however sordid it is.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2528481,00.html
Poor, poor, Saddam...was taunted before he died?
The things that upset these people are mind boggling!
Saddam had a more dignified execution than he deserved!
The Italian government protested. Maliki told them that Mussolini's trial only lasted a minute.
You are exactly right about that. It just underscores the incompetence of the current government that it can't even conduct an execution in the proper fashion.
I was glad to see Saddam executed for his crimes, but the hamhanded way it was done will send reverberations through the Sunni areas throughout the region. This could end up as a Sunni rallying-cry for Sunni rejectionists along the lines of "Remember the Alamo."
AMEN to that, Jan!
I'm more than fed up with the acquiescence to MINORITIES everywhere as well. Who cares if a percentage of Iraq's small MINORITY of sunnis protest.
Feeling a bit feisty this morning, I say;
Good...BRING IT ON and let's get this thing over with!
Iraq's Mr. Cellophane Mowaffak Al-Rubaie: Soft-spoken, bespectacled and courtly, this member of the Iraqi Governing Council once served as the international spokesman for a feared terrorist group. Now he's a key player in the New Iraq
Marie Colvin
THE knock on the door came just before 6am. Saddam Hussein’s executioners were disguised with black balaclavas.
He spent his last minutes yesterday in the sordid bowels of Iraqi military intelligence headquarters, once home to his own torturers and killers.
Just as the dawn call to prayer was beginning over the city, he was led, shambling in leg irons, to the scaffold to pay the price for his crimes against the Iraqi people.
“We took him to the gallows room and he looked like he wondered what was going on,” said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi government’s national security adviser, who saw him die. “He looked at the gallows not believing what was going to happen.”
As the world reacted with mixed jubilation and condemnation to the hanging, Rubaie revealed that the deposed dictator muttered as he was taken to his death: “Do not be afraid; it is where we all go.”
Rubaie was among the 15 people in the ill-lit room that was Saddam’s last sight on earth. The former Iraqi dictator showed no remorse, said Rubaie, speaking by telephone from Baghdad.
“He was respected throughout before and after the execution. We followed rigorously international and Islamic standards.”
After the dramas of Friday night, when Iraqi officials said Saddam’s death was imminent but his lawyers tried to stay his execution with an appeal to a United States court, his fate was set early yesterday.
Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, had signed the death warrant before going to celebrate his son’s wedding, and the presidential council had endorsed it.
The American jailers who had custody of Saddam were ordered to surrender him to the Iraqi government. They offered him tranquillisers but Saddam refused. “We received physical custody of Saddam Hussein around 5.30am from the coalition forces, and we took over and he became ours,” said Rubaie.
As US troops stood guard outside, Saddam was first led to a sparse and unheated holding room in the bowels of the headquarters of Iraqi military intelligence. It would not have been lost on him that his own security forces had tortured and killed many people in the same grim building. Saddam was left for about half an hour to contemplate his fate. Iraqi law provides that a condemned man be allowed a final cigarette and a meal before his execution.
“He was handcuffed and we took him and sat him down,” said Rubaie. “There was a judge, a deputy general, deputy minister of justice, deputy minister of interior, a couple of other ministers, myself and a doctor.” After formalities they took him through “a huge file” of documents detailing his trial for crimes against humanity.
“The judge took him through the conviction. He was silent until he saw a video camera, and then began shouting slogans such as ‘God is great’. He started his rhetoric: ‘Long live Islam, down with Persia’, down with this and that. He started shouting his head off.” Rubaie made a last gesture of mercy. “His handcuffs were a little bit tight, and hurt him, and I instructed the guards to loosen them.”
The formalities over, the four masked executioners stepped forward. Short, tubby and dressed in leather jackets, they looked more like Al-Qaeda killers in an amateur terrorist video than those responsible for carrying out the sentence of death on a former head of state. Even though Saddam had shrunk in stature since the days of his pomp, he towered over them.
He had dressed for death in clothes sewn by his personal Turkish tailor: black trousers, shined black shoes, a starched white shirt, black pullover and a black wool overcoat that protected him against the deep chill of his remaining minutes in the execution suite. His hair was dyed his signature black, but he had heavy bags under his eyes.
In sight of a new hemp noose hanging from the ceiling, the executioners removed his handcuffs to tie his hands behind his back. As he stood close to the trapdoor one wrapped a black scarf around his neck to shield it from rope burns. When they went to put the black hood over his head, he mumbled: “That won’t be necessary.” The noose was slipped over his head.
He stood looking almost bewildered, and an executioner awkwardly tightened the hand-coiled knot of the noose on the left side of his neck.
Even on the brink of death Saddam had not forgotten the video camera. Just before he dropped through a trapdoor on a platform surrounded by red railing, he shouted the Muslim profession of faith, “God is great and Muhammad is his prophet” and “Palestine is Arab”.
“He was standing with the rope round his neck,” said Rubaie. “The executioner started reading verses from the Koran, ‘There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger’. He repeated it twice and [Saddam] went down in no time.” The hangman pulled a lever, and Saddam dropped silently about 3ft through a metal trapdoor. It was 6.10am. Rubaie said he died instantly. “It was so, so quick, totally painless and there was no movement after that.”
Sami al-Askari, who represented the prime minister at the hanging, said he “heard his neck snap”.
Saddam hung from the rope for about 10 minutes, watched by the audience of about 15 people who could see him dangling under the platform. A doctor checked that his heart had stopped, then one of the executioners untied him. There was blood on the rope. The executioners put him in a white body bag and took photographs as proof for diehard loyalists that Saddam was dead. Iraqi television broadcast a still photograph of the last image of the dictator, his neck at an unnatural angle, sticking out of the white shroud.
Munir Haddad, an Iraqi appeals court judge, also witnessed the execution. He said afterwards: “One of the guards present asked Saddam Hussein whether he was afraid of dying. Saddam said, ‘Why would I? I spent my whole life fighting the infidels and the intruders.’
“Another guard asked him, ‘Why did you destroy Iraq, and destroy us? You starved us, and you allowed the Americans to occupy us’. His reply was, ‘I destroyed the invaders and . . . I destroyed the enemies of Iraq, and I turned Iraq from poverty into wealth’.
“Saddam was normal and in full control. He said, ‘This is my end. I started my life as a fighter and as a political militant. So death does not frighten me’.
“He said, ‘We’re going to heaven, and our enemies will rot in hell’.
“When he was taken to the gallows, the guards tried to put a hood on his head, but he refused. Then he recited verses from the Koran. Some of the guards started to taunt him.”
The guards chanted the name of the Shi’ite firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. “Who is Moqtada?” — Saddam sneered.
“A cleric who was present asked Saddam to recite some spiritual words,” Haddad said. “Saddam did so, but with sarcasm. These were his last words, and then the cord tightened around his neck and he dropped to his death.”
My feelings exactly!... considering all that is going on in Iraq, the fact that no one kicked him in the ass or spit on his face (it would not have surprised me...), makes the whole execution, a very dignified affair. I can't deny that I am actually very satisfied (if not happy) this guy is gone for ever!... there is such finality with his death. Now we all know his is ACTUALLY GONE FOR EVER! I hope this will help Iraq somehow and us (U.S.) as well.
But I can't help wondering, how is it possible not everyone sees this the same way as me? Can we humans really be so different inside?... I am afraid we are... And when we are so different it's difficult to achieve that peace we all want.
Visions of a future Hell??
This only confirms that 90% of the news we view and read is total bullsh*t.
There are plenty of active enemies out there TET1968. They just do not have access to what they really would like to have in order to destroy us and ours in that neck of the woods. I don't underestimate nor make light of the enemy.
But Iran is furiously working to produce that very tool/weapon those Islamists need to destroy us...
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