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| Guard 'quizzed over Saddam video' | Guard 'quizzed over Saddam video' |
| (20 minutes later) | |
| A guard present at Saddam Hussein's execution is being questioned over the unofficial mobile phone footage of the hanging, Iraqi officials say. | A guard present at Saddam Hussein's execution is being questioned over the unofficial mobile phone footage of the hanging, Iraqi officials say. |
| Iraqi authorities have pledged to track down the person responsible for a video in which the former Iraqi leader was seen being taunted in his last moments. | Iraqi authorities have pledged to track down the person responsible for a video in which the former Iraqi leader was seen being taunted in his last moments. |
| The US military has distanced itself from the execution, saying it would have handled events differently. | The US military has distanced itself from the execution, saying it would have handled events differently. |
| Iraq's national security adviser said the video was "disgusting". | Iraq's national security adviser said the video was "disgusting". |
| National Security Adviser Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie was present at the execution, carried out early last Saturday. | National Security Adviser Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie was present at the execution, carried out early last Saturday. |
| A committee investigating who had made the film was questioning a guard at the prison facility where Saddam Hussein was hanged at dawn on Saturday, Mr Rubaie told the Reuters news agency. | A committee investigating who had made the film was questioning a guard at the prison facility where Saddam Hussein was hanged at dawn on Saturday, Mr Rubaie told the Reuters news agency. |
| There seems to be a lot of concern about the last two minutes of Saddam Hussein's life and less about the first 69 years Tony SnowWhite House spokesman href="/1/hi/world/middle_east/6227999.stm" class="">Papers fear Iraq tension | |
| He said the release of the video and the taunting it revealed - including chants praising Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr - had damaged relations between Sunni and Shia Muslims. | |
| "Whoever leaked this video meant to harm national reconciliation and drive a wedge between Shi'ites and Sunnis," he told the Reuters news agency. | |
| Haider Majeed, an official in Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's media office, was quoted by AFP as saying: "It's true. One of the guards has been arrested." | |
| The prime minister's office itself has not yet confirmed the arrest, but has acknowledged the statement by Mr Majeed. | |
| Iraq's government has expressed its concern over the release of the video. | |
| The official government video of the execution did not include any audio and did not show Saddam Hussein's actual death. | |
| But in the mobile phone video shot in the gallows chamber men could be heard shouting insults at the prisoner before he dropped through the gallows platform. | |
| Mixed messages | |
| Earlier on Wednesday, the US military commander in Iraqi, Maj Gen William Caldwell, said the US would have handled the execution differently, and denied reports that US troops searched people entering the room. | |
| "This was a government of Iraq decision on how that whole process went down," he said. | |
| But White House spokesman Tony Snow said criticism of the way the execution unfolded was deflecting attention from Saddam Hussein's real crimes. | |
| "There seems to be a lot of concern about the last two minutes of Saddam Hussein's life and less about the first 69 [years], in which he murdered hundreds of thousands of people," Mr Snow said. | |
| "That's why he was executed." |