Palestinian militants from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement, shout slogans in front of a picture depicting former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein during a protest against his execution, in Balata refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Nablus, yesterday. - Reuters

BAGHDAD (Reuters):

A senior Iraqi court official nearly halted Saddam Hussein's execution when supporters of a radical Shi'ite cleric and militia leader taunted the former president as he stood on the gallows.

Prosecutor Munkith al-Faroon, who is heard appealing for order on explicit Internet video of Saturday's hanging that has inflamed sectarian passions, said yesterday he threatened to leave if the jeering did not stop - and that would have halted the execution as a prosecution observer must be present by law.

"I threatened to leave," Faroon told Reuters. "They knew that if I left, the execution could not go ahead."

Angered officials

Many in Saddam's Sunni minority, and moderate Shi'ites and Kurds, have been angered and embarrassed by the video. In it, observers chant "Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada!" for Shi'ite militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr. Saddam, by contrast, looks dignified on the gallows and replies: "Is this what you call manhood?"

As the Iraqi Government mounted an investigation into how officials smuggled in mobile phone cameras, he also challenged the accounts of the justice minister and an adviser to the prime minister who said the film was shot by a guard - Faroon said one of two people taking video was a senior government official.