'Saddam's execution nearly halted over taunts'

Baghdad: A senior Iraqi court official nearly halted Saddam Hussain's execution when supporters of a Shiite 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 on Tuesday 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.

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.

In a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, French lawyer Emmanuel Ludot called for "a committee of inquiry to be set up under the aegis of the United Nations," arguing that the conditions of Saddam's execution were "unacceptable on matters of principle".

The lawyer argued that Saddam "was until his death considered a prisoner of war and as such he should have benefited from the protections of the Geneva Conventions of 1949."

Under the conventions, Saddam should have been shot by firing squad rather than hanged, he said.