New Delhi: In what probably best reflects the Western world's desperation to see the deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein dead, the online media, mostly hosted in the West, went head over heels with the video footage of the execution breaking all the norms that media is expected to observe with such graphic visuals.
While some video footage of Hussein being led to the gallows, where he refused to wear the customary hood, was also shown on Iraqi state television, live images of the execution popped up in the worldwide web within hours of the execution at 0600 hours (Iraqi local time) on Saturday.
The grainy footage, apparently shot on a mobile phone or other low-quality camera by a witness who was standing below looking up at the gallows, was circulating on the Internet on Sunday, a day after he was hanged for crimes against humanity.
Interestingly, some websites had promised to show Saddam's hanging live on the Internet before the execution. The last moments of Saddam Hussein's life at the death chamber was chaotic filled with shudders and shouting.
The 69-year-old former dictator looked calm and composed as he stood on the gallows. He shouted angry political slogans as he was brought into the execution chamber once used by his own feared intelligence services.
"We took him to the gallows and he was saying some few slogans. He was very, very, very, broken," Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafak Al-Rubaie, who witnessed the execution, said. Saddam refused to wear the customary hood before the hanging.
The footage then showed the executioners taunting the former president, shouting "Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada," a reference to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose father was killed by Saddam's agents. The masked guards angrily shouted at Saddam just before the hanging: "You have destroyed us. You have killed us. You have made us live in destitution."
Saddam answered: "I have saved you from destitution and misery and destroyed your enemies, the Persians and Americans." The guard cursed him, saying "God damn you," according to The New York Times. Saddam replied: "God damn you."
One video on the Internet, lasting about two-and-a-half minutes, shows Saddam drop through the trap door while still intoning the Muslim profession of faith. He was abruptly cut off in the second verse: "I bear witness that Mohammad..."
He was also shown hanging, with his eyes open. The film is punctuated by flashes, apparently as witnesses took photographs.
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