| | Guard questioned on Saddam hanging video; Times retracts claim on source of 'snuff' film
RAW STORY
Published:
Wednesday January 3, 2007
 A breaking report at CNN says that a guard present at Saddam Hussein's execution is being questioned in the Iraqi government's investigation of who made the unfiltered cellphone video of the hanging now circulating the internet. The report emerged as the New York Times appeared to retract its suggestion that Iraq's national security adviser may have been the source of the unofficial video.
But, according to the Associated Press, "an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media...said it was 'an official who supervised the execution' and who is 'now under investigation.'"
Sadiq al-Rikabi, an adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, told CNN that the guard was "suspected of making and distributing the video." The report also quoted Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki's National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie as stating that "there were people in the execution chamber whom he could not account for and who did not seem to be part of the execution team." AP also stated that the guard in question has been detained.
The report comes after allegations emerged late last night that al-Rubaie himself may have had a cell phone in the execution chamber. A report in the New York Times published last night stated the following:
Mr. Maliki seemed equally eager to ward off the opprobrium stirred by the execution. As his aides announced that the events at the hanging would be the subject of an inquiry, one of the officials who attended the hanging, a prosecutor at the trial that condemned Mr. Hussein to death, said that one of two men he had seen holding a cellphone camera aloft to make a video of Mr. Hussein's last moments -- up to and past the point where he fell through the trapdoor -- was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki's national security adviser. Attempts to reach Mr. Rubaie were unsuccessful. The prosecutor, Munkith al-Faroun, said the other man holding a cellphone above his head was also an official, but he could not recall his name.
However, in the version on the Times website this morning, the paragraph had been parsed, and the allegation was removed:
Mr. Maliki seemed equally eager to ward off the opprobrium stirred by the execution. His aides announced that the events at the hanging would be the subject of an inquiry. A prosecutor who attended the execution, Munkith al-Faroun, said he thought one of the invited witnesses had recorded the session on a cellphone, but he could not recall his name.
The article makes no other references to Mr. al-Rubaie.
On the blog Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall offered other circumstantial evidence suggesting that al-Rubaie had shot the video of the chaotic execution seen by millions of people across the internet. In Marshall's analysis, there was some reason to believe that Al-Rubaie may have called CNN from the scene of the gallows where Hussein was hanged.
In its report, CNN noted that the Times appeared to retract its claim that al-Rubaie filmed the video, which the Iraqi official strongly denied.
An AP story also noted that Munqith al-Faroon, the prosecutor quoted by the Times had clarified his statement to them:
"I am not accusing Mowaffak al-Rubaie (the national security adviser), and I did not see him taking pictures," al-Faroon told the AP.
"But I saw two of the government officials who were...present during the execution taking all the video of the execution, using the lights that were there for the official taping of the execution. They used mobile phone cameras. I do not know their names, but I would remember their faces," al-Faroon said in a telephone interview.
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