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Baghdad launches probe into Saddam TV spectacle

"There were a few guards who shouted slogans that were inappropriate and that's now the subject of a government investigation."

Sami al-Askar, adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki

The Iraqi government launched an inquiry on Monday into how guards filmed and taunted former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein on the gallows, turning his execution into a TV spectacle that has enflamed sectarian anger.

A senior Iraqi official said that the US ambassador tried to persuade Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki not to rush into hanging the former president just four days after his appeal was turned down, urging the government to wait another two weeks.

News of the ousted strongman's death on Saturday and of his treatment by officials of the Shiite-led government was blamed by one witness for sparking a prison riot among mainly Sunni Arab inmates at a jail near the northern city of Mosul.

"There were a few guards who shouted slogans that were inappropriate and that's now the subject of a government investigation," said Sami al-Askari, an adviser to Maliki.

The government released video showing the hangman talking to a composed Saddam as he placed the noose around his neck.

But mobile phone footage on the Web showed guards shouting "Go to hell!" chanting the name of a Shiite militia leader and exchanging insults with Saddam before he fell through the trap in mid-prayer and his body swung, broken-necked, on the rope.

Saddam's exiled eldest daughter and even some residents of Dujail, the Shiite town whose sufferings led to his conviction for crimes against humanity, joined mourning rituals for him, most of these concentrated among Sunni Arabs in Saddam's home region north of Baghdad where he was buried on Sunday.

Mourners continued to arrive at his native village of Awja, near Tikrit.

His daughter Raghd, who helped finance his defense from her strictly supervised exile in Jordan, joined several hundred people in Amman in a show of solidarity.

Iraqi troops and police rushed to Mosul's Padush prison to put down a riot after visitors broke news of Saddam's treatment.

The governor said seven guards and three prisoners were injured although a visitor reported gunfire and the death of an inmate.

There has been no significant repeat of the series of car bombings that killed more than 70 people in Shiite neighborhoods on Saturday within hours of the dawn execution, but the government and US forces are on alert for the kind of sectarian violence that has pitched Iraq toward civil war since Saddam's overthrow.

Enraged crowds protested the hanging of Saddam Hussein across Iraq's Sunni heartland, as a mob in Samara broke the locks off a bomb-damaged Shiite shrine and marched through carrying a mock coffin and photo of Saddam.

The demonstration in the Golden Dome -- which was shattered in a bombing by Sunni extremists approximately 10 months ago -- suggested that many Sunni Arabs may now more actively support the small number of Sunni militants fighting the country's Shiite-dominated government.

The Feb. 22 bombing of the shrine triggered the current cycle of retaliatory attacks between Sunnis and Shiites, in the form of daily bombings, kidnappings and murders.

Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry ordered the closure of another Iraqi TV channel, Sharkiya, accusing it of fomenting hatred. The channel, owned by a London-based businessman who was once an official under Saddam, continued broadcasting from Dubai.

The government has taken similar measures against several channels, all with perceived Sunni leanings.

While Saddam's sentencing and then hastened death brought muted responses from most Sunnis, many have been particularly angered by video showing supporters of Shiite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr heckling the former president andchanting "Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada!" at him.

"Is this what you call manhood?" Saddam told them in reply.
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