The New York Times on Wednesday reported that Munqith al-Faroon, a prosecutor in the Dujail case, told the newspaper "one of two men he had seen holding a cell phone 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."

bouvet 2007-01-01 11:08 I wonder if American or British leaders would have the same dignity and courage to die like Saddam? maddness 2007-01-01 10:18 So far, according to John Hopkins University's research, more than 650,000 Iraqis had been killed since Bush's "liberation" of Iraq from Saddam's tyranny. Who is responsible for the 650,000 Iraqi dead and thousands of US deaths? Not to mention 60,000 US soldiers crippled and mentally ill after the aggression... Click to see more readers' Comments

The Times said it had been unable to reach al-Rubaie for comment. AP also could not reach him Wednesday. His secretary said the security adviser, a close aide to al-Maliki, was in Najaf and would not return until later.

Al-Faroon told the AP Wednesday that there were 14 Iraqi officials, including himself and another prosecutor, as well as three hangmen present at the execution. All the officials, he said, were flown by US helicopter to the execution site.

The prosecutor said he believed all cell phones had been confiscated before the flight and that some of the officials' bodyguards, who arrived by car, had smuggled the camera phones two officials he had seen taking the video pictures.

"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.

The prosecutor said the two officials were openly taking video pictures, which are believed to be those which appeared on Al-Jazeera satellite television and a Web site within hours of Saddam's death.

Some of the last words Saddam heard, according to the leaked cell phone video, where a chant of "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada," a reference to Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical anti-American Shiite cleric, whose Mahdi Army militia is believed responsible for many of this year's wave of killings that have targeted Sunnis and driven many from their homes.

Al-Sadr's father was killed by Saddam. The militant cleric is a key al-Maliki backer.

Also Wednesday, US troops detained 23 people suspected of having ties to senior al-Qaida leaders in raids in western Iraq, the military said. The raids took place in Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's volatile western Anbar province.

During the raids, three of the suspects detonated an improvised explosive device, then ran into a house. American troops shot one of the suspects, wounding him as he tried to flee, the military said in a statement.

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