Iraq man to face magistrates over Saddam taunting
Source: Reuters
By Ibon Villelabeitia BAGHDAD, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Iraqi officials have handed a man over to magistrates after a government investigation into who taunted Saddam Hussein with sectarian abuse moments before the former president was hanged, an Iraqi official said on Tuesday. Iraq government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said an official government inquiry concluded that the taunting captured on an illicit video of Saddam's Dec. 30 execution could be blamed on "individual behaviour". Dabbagh's comments appeared on the same day that a new clandestine video showing Saddam's corpse with a vivid red wound on the neck was posted on the Internet, further inflaming sectarian passions in a country on the brink of civil war. "The government has discovered the person who did this," Dabbagh told a news conference, referring to the shouting. "This person has been referred to the court. The government does not interfere in the work of the judicial system and now it is for the court to decide." He did not identify the man or explain why he was the only person under investigation for jeering Saddam on the gallows. In the grainy video several men can be heard taunting Saddam as hangmen in black balaclavas slip the noose over his neck. The footage provoked a flood of condemnation from around the world for the manner in which Saddam's execution was conducted. Government officials had vowed not to "leave a single stone unturned" and prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon, one of a dozen officials who witnessed the execution, told Reuters two government officials filmed Saddam's last minutes. In the hanging video, distributed on the Internet, people are heard shouting the name of a radical Shi'ite cleric whose militia is widely blamed for killing Sunni Arabs while hooded executioners slip a noose over a composed-looking Saddam's neck. But Dabbagh told reporters: "The footage was not a problem but the shouting." Investigators earlier detained two men, but he did not give their names. The Iraqi legal system requires an investigating magistrate to review whether evidence merits pressing charges before determining whether a case should go to trial. Dabbagh said the man had been spontaneously but unacceptably overcome by emotion as he watched Saddam approach his execution. "This is a natural reaction for a person who saw a criminal rule Iraq for 35 years and who crushed all people," he said. "This was an irresponsible response and we condemn this response." A new illicit video showing the body of Saddam lying on a hospital trolley with a vivid red wound to his throat after being hanged was also posted on the Internet on Tuesday. The 27-second clip, which showed a sheet being removed to reveal Saddam's neck severely twisted and with a smear of blood on his left cheek, is the third illicit film -- and fourth video altogether -- to emerge since he was hanged. Dabbagh also said Saddam's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former judge Awad al-Bander would be executed "in a few days" but that the government had not set a date yet. "Logistical" reasons have been blamed for a delay in the executions of the two men, who were convicted with Saddam for killing Shi'ites in the 1980s and had been expected to go to the gallows the same day as the former president. "The government is determined to carry out the verdict," Dabbagh said. The United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, has urged the Iraqi government to exercise "restraint" in the use of the death penalty.
| AlertNet news is provided by |  |
