Body of missing U.S. soldier found in river: Iraqi police

Reuters

The half-naked body of one of three missing U.S. soldiers was found on Wednesday in the Euphrates River in the town of Mussayab south of Baghdad, police said.

The U.S. military said it was investigating reports that a body had been found in a canal in the area.

Hilla police spokesman Captain Muthanna al-Maamouri said there were bullet wounds to the torso and head of the body, which was wearing U.S. Army-issue pants and boots and had a tattoo on the left arm.

Maamouri said the body had been turned over to U.S. forces.

Thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops having been scouring farmlands through an area south of Baghdad known as the "triangle of death" since an ambush on May 12 in which four U.S soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were killed.

Three soldiers were reported missing after the attack. The al Qaeda-led Islamic State in Iraq has said it abducted them but has given no proof it has them.

A police officer in Mussayab, 60 km (40 miles) south of Baghdad, who declined to be named, said the body had been found after a tip-off from residents.

"The military is investigating reports of a body of a canal but we have no confirmation yet," a U.S. military official in Baghdad said.

General David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said last Friday that he believes at least two of the three missing soldiers are still alive.

Suicide truck bomb collapses Baghdad bridge

10 people reported killed as explosion sends cars crashing into Tigris river

Associated Press

A suicide truck bomb exploded on a major bridge in Baghdad early Thursday, collapsing the steel structure and sending cars toppling into the Tigris River below, police and witnesses said. At least 10 people were killed.

Hospital officials said another 26 were injured, and police were trying to rescue as many as 20 people whose cars plummeted off the al-Sarafiya bridge.

Waves lapped up against twisted girders sinking into the water, as police patrol boats searched for survivors. Scuba divers donned flippers and waded in from the banks of the Tigris, as U.S. helicopters whirred overhead.

Farhan al-Sudani, a 34-year-old Shiite businessman who lives near the bridge, said the blast woke him at dawn.

“A huge explosion shook our house and I thought it would demolish our house. Me and my wife jumped immediately from our bed, grabbed our three kids and took them outside,” he said.

The al-Sarafiya bridge connected two northern Baghdad neighborhoods — Waziriyah, a mostly Sunni enclave, and Utafiyah, a Shiite area.

Police said the attack was by a suicide truck bomber, but Associated Press Television News footage showed the bridge broken apart in two places — perhaps the result of two blasts.

'One of Baghdad’s monuments'
Cement pilings that support the bridge’s steel structure were left crumbling. At the base of one of them laid a charred vehicle engine, believed to be that of the truck bomb.

“We were astonished more when we saw the extent of damage,” said Ahmed Abdul-Karim, 45, who also lives near the bridge. “I was standing in my garden and I saw the smoke and flying debris.”

Locals said the al-Sarafiya bridge is believed to be at least 75 years old, built by the British in the early part of the 20th century.

“It is one of Baghdad’s monuments. This is really damaging for Iraq. We are losing a lot of our history every day,” Abdul-Karim said.

Deadly blast rocks Iraqi parliament, at least 8 dead

In stunning security breach, bomber detonates explosives inside cafeteria

Associated Press

A suspected suicide bomber blew himself up in the Iraqi parliament cafeteria in a stunning assault in the heart of the heavily fortified, U.S.-protected Green Zone on Thursday, killing at least eight people, the American military said. At least two lawmakers, and at least 10 other people were wounded.

Thursday's attack came hours after a suicide truck bomb exploded on a major bridge in Baghdad, collapsing the steel structure and sending cars tumbling into the Tigris River below, police and witnesses said. At least 10 people were killed in that attack.

Iraqi officials said the bomber struck the cafeteria while several lawmakers were eating lunch.

After the blast, security guards sealed the building and no one — including lawmakers — was allowed to enter or leave.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said no Americans were hurt in the blast.

The bombing came amid the two-month-old security crackdown in Baghdad, which has sought to restore stability in the capital so that the government of Iraq can take key political steps by June 30 or face a withdrawal of American support.

U.S. officials react
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said witness accounts indicated a suicide attack. “We don’t know at this point who it was. We do know in the past that suicide vests have been used predominantly by al-Qaida,” the U.S. military spokesman said in an Associated Press broadcast interview.

At White House, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe condemned the attack by “terrorists and extremists.”

“We’ve known there’s a security problem in Baghdad, which is why the president has structured a new strategy and why Gen. (David) Petraeus and his commanders are carrying it out,” added Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “But this is still early in the process and I don’t think anybody expected there would not be counterefforts by terrorists to undermine the security progress we’re trying to make.”

Sunni, Shiite are fatalities
One of the dead lawmakers was Mohammed Awad, a member of the Sunni National Dialogue Front, said Saleh al-Mutlaq, the leader of the party, which holds 11 seats in Iraq’s legislature. A female Sunni lawmaker from the same list was wounded, he said.

A security official at the building said a second lawmaker, a Shiite member, also was killed. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

But Mukhlis al-Zamili of the Shiite Fadhila party said the second dead lawmaker was a Kurd, adding that six of those wounded were members of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s bloc.

Al-Zamili also said he believed a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest was behind the attack.

Another member of the National Dialogue Front, Mohammed al-Dayni, also suggested a suicide bomber was behind it.

“I am standing now at the site of the explosion and looking at the severed legs of the person who carried out the operation. If this tells us anything, it tells us that security is lax,” al-Dayni told Iraq’s Sharqiya television.

Earlier in the day, security officials used dogs to check people entering the building in a rare precaution — apparently concerned that an attack might take place.

Green Zone penetrable
The brazen bombing was the clearest evidence yet that militants can penetrate even the most secure locations. Masses of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers are on the streets in the ninth week of a security crackdown in the capital and security measures inside the Green Zone have been significantly hardened.

The U.S. military reported April 1 that two suicide vests were found in the heavily fortified region that also houses the U.S. Embassy and offices of the Iraqi government. A militant rocket attack last month killed two Americans, a soldier and a contractor. A few days earlier, a rocket landed within 100 yards of a building where U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was holding a news conference. No one was hurt.

Khalaf al-Ilyan, one of the three leaders of the Iraqi Accordance Front, which holds 44 seats, said the attack was “aimed at everyone — all parties — our parliament in general being a symbol and a representative of all segments of Iraqi society.”

Al-Ilyan, who is in Jordan recovering from knee surgery, said the blast also “underlines the failure of the government’s security plan.”

“The plan is 100 percent a failure. It’s a complete flop. The explosion means that instability and lack of security has reached the Green Zone, which the government boasts is heavily fortified,” he said.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Lou Fintor said its officials were “investigating the nature and source of the explosion. No embassy employees or U.S. citizens were affected.”

Attacks in the Green Zone are rare.

The worst known attack inside the enclave occurred Oct. 14, 2004, when insurgents detonated explosives at a market and a popular cafe, killing six people. That was the first bombing in the sprawling region.

On Nov. 25, 2004, a mortar attack inside the zone killed four employees of a British security firm and wounded at least 12.

On Jan. 29, 2005, insurgents hit the U.S. Embassy compound with a rocket, killing two Americans — a civilian and a Navy sailor — on the eve of landmark elections. Four other Americans were wounded.

Bridge rescue attempts
In addition to killing 10 people, Thursday’s bombing of the al-Sarafiya bridge wounded 26, hospital officials said, and police were trying to rescue as many as 20 people whose cars plummeted off the span.

The al-Sarafiya bridge connected two northern Baghdad neighborhoods — Waziriyah, a mostly Sunni enclave, and Utafiyah, a Shiite area.

Police blamed the attack on a suicide truck bomber, but AP Television News video showed the bridge broken in two places — perhaps the result of two blasts.

Cement pilings that support the steel structure were left crumbling. At the base of one lay a charred vehicle engine, believed to be that of the truck bomb.

“We were astonished more when we saw the extent of damage,” said Ahmed Abdul-Karim, 45, who also lives near the bridge. “I was standing in my garden and I saw the smoke and flying debris.”

Saddam boosted fitness training for hanging: lawyer

By Suleiman al-Khalidi

Less than 48 hours before he was hanged, Saddam Hussein said he had doubled the workout on his treadmill to be in good shape when he faced the gallows, according to his Iraqi lawyer.

Wadood Fawzi Shams Deen, who met the ousted leader at a U.S. military camp in one of his former palaces on December 28, says Saddam told him and another lawyer that he had done 35 minutes of exercise in the previous two days.

"I am making extra effort to prove to them that an Arab dies with honor and dignity defending honourable principles," Shams Deen quoted Saddam as saying.

Saddam's hanging, secretly recorded in footage distributed on the Internet, has turned him into a martyr in parts of the Arab world, overshadowing memories of his often brutal and bloody rule and of his conviction for crimes against humanity.

Pictures of his composed conduct and erect bearing in the face of taunting at a shambolic execution has helped the supporters who have already begun burnishing his image as a hero -- even as the court still trying Saddam's associates shows pictures of thousands of Iraqi Kurds killed in chemical attacks.

The value of posterity was not lost on Saddam. "The execution will turn Saddam Hussein into a symbol for another hundred years," he said, according to the lawyers, who took extensive notes of their last conversation with him.

Saddam, smoking a Cuban Cohiba cigar and wearing the same black overcoat he wore when he was hanged on December 30, told the lawyers he had turned down an offer of tranquilisers from a U.S. doctor when the appeals court upheld his death sentence.

"I told him that God has given me enough faith to do without them," Shams Deen said Saddam told him and Bander Awad al-Bander, the lawyer son of one of Saddam's co-defendants.

"I will face my creator with a brave heart and clean hands."

Offering cigars to his visitors and a nearby U.S. guard, Saddam said he had been crossing the Tigris River in broad daylight, swimming part of the way and using a small fisherman's boat for the rest, only days before his arrest in a tiny farmhouse cellar near his hometown, Tikrit, in December 2003.

POEMS

Saddam recited poems about chivalry, endurance, heroism and holy war (jihad), saying poetry had helped him deal with his years in U.S. captivity, much of it in solitary confinement, Shams Deen said.

"We have humbled the long nights and it has not broken our will," he quoted Saddam as saying. "Poetry was my window to the world."

Saddam said he had read the Koran, the Muslim holy book, eight times over during the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

Other titles he requested and got were poetry by the eminent Arab poet Al-Mutanabi and a copy of the U.N. human rights declaration.

Saddam said he had predicted to a senior American interrogator a week after his arrest in December 2003 that Iraq would be a magnet for all the groups that "hated America":

"They will fight America in Iraq, all in their own way and with their own agenda. It is better that you leave sooner rather than later."

Iraq would be a "bigger quagmire than Vietnam for the United States," Shams Deen quoted Saddam as saying, and by early 2007 U.S. troops would have been "driven out of Iraq in humiliation."

"They have reached a point of powerlessness," Saddam said, adding that the insurgency had gained strength throughout his detention.

"Maybe in the first three months they were in need of Saddam. But the resistance now doesn't need Saddam Hussein ... and will, God willing, defeat the occupiers of great Iraq," he said, according to the lawyers.

As he said farewell to his visitors, Saddam said he would leave his people "content that the moment of America's end in Iraq is fast approaching."

50 militants reported killed in Iraq

By LAUREN FRAYER, Associated Press Writer

U.S. and Iraqi soldiers, backed by American warplanes, battled suspected insurgents for hours Tuesday in central Baghdad, and 50 militant fighters were killed, the Defense Ministry said.

Elsewhere, a cargo plane carrying Turkish construction workers crashed during landing at an airport near Baghdad, killing 30 people and injuring two, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said. Initial reports indicated the plane crashed due to bad weather and heavy fog, a Foreign Ministry official said on condition of anonymity because an official announcement had not yet been authorized.

U.S. helicopters circled above the Haifa Street area where the battle took place, and witnesses said they had seen the aircraft firing into the combat zone. Explosions rang out across the area, just north of the heavily fortified Green Zone.

Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Shaker, a ministry spokesman, said 21 militants were captured, including seven foreign Arabs — including three Syrians — and one Sudanese.

Police said the clashes began when gunmen attacked Iraqi army checkpoints, and that Iraqi soldiers called for U.S. military help.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Iraqi forces had decided to wipe out "terrorist hide-outs" in the area once and for all. "God willing, Haifa Street will never threaten the Iraqi people again," he said.

Al-Dabbagh also said followers of Saddam Hussein were to blame for the violence.

"This would never have happened were it not for some groups who provided safe havens for these terrorists. And as everyone knows, the former Baathists provided safe haven and logistics for them to destabilize Iraq," he said.

Haifa Street has long been Sunni insurgent territory and housed many senior Baath Party members and officials during Saddam's rule.

The Defense Ministry issued a statement saying 11 people were arrested in the Haifa Street battle, including seven Syrians. But the U.S. military said only three people had been arrested.

A U.S. military spokesman said American and Iraqi forces launched raids to capture multiple targets, disrupt insurgent activity and restore Iraqi Security Forces control of North Haifa Street.

"This area has been subject to insurgent activity, which has repeatedly disrupted Iraqi Security Force operations in central Baghdad," Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl said in a statement.

Troops were receiving small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenade and indirect fire attacks during the operation, the statement said.

"Anyone who conducts activities outside the rule of law will be subject to the consequences," Rear Adm. Mark Fox, another U.S. military spokesman, said at a news conference with al-Dabbagh.

The battle came less than 48 hours before President Bush was due to deliver a major policy speech outlining changes in U.S. strategy in Iraq. He was expected to announce an increase of up to 20,000 additional U.S. troops.

Al-Dabbagh said the Iraqi government supported such a troop surge.

"The goal is to protect Baghdad and other areas. If this is going to be achieved by an increase in friendly coalition forces, we have no objection and we support this," al-Dabbagh told reporters.

Bush has also shuffled his teams of military and diplomatic advisers ahead of announcing his new Iraq strategy.

Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander overseeing the military theater that includes Iraq, will be succeeded by Adm. William Fallon, now Abizaid's counterpart in the Pacific. Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus is the president's choice to be the new chief commander in Iraq, replacing Gen. George Casey.

Casey in turn will replace the retiring Gen. Peter Schoomaker as Army chief of staff.

"There may be a lot of changes in leadership and there may be a lot of changes in tactics, but the relationship with our Iraqi counterparts is unchanging," Fox told reporters.

The cargo plane had taken off from the city of Adana in southern Turkey and was carrying construction workers from the Kulak construction company, the governor of Adana said.

On board the Antonov-26 were 29 Turks and one American, as well as a crew of three from Moldova, one from Russia and one from Ukraine, Gov. Cahit Kirac said.

The Anatolia news agency said the plane crashed 200 yards from Baghdad's Alasad airport.

Meanwhile, a new video of Saddam's body surfaced on a Baathist Web site.

The 27-second video shows the late dictator's corpse with a gaping neck wound, his head twisted at a 90-degree angle.

Apparently recorded on a cell phone, the video pans the length of Saddam's body wrapped in a white sheet. Voices in the background say, "Hurry up, hurry up," and "Just one second, just one second ... I'm about finished."

It was the second clandestine video that had been leaked from the hanging. The first, released on the day of the execution, showed Saddam being taunted in his final moments and then dropping through the gallows floor.

Al-Dabbagh said the person responsible for recording the first video, from inside the execution chamber, had been arrested and referred to an Iraqi court.

In other violence Tuesday, a policeman was wounded when a roadside bomb hit his patrol car in downtown Baghdad, police said.

Another roadside bomb missed an Iraqi army patrol in Mosul but wounded an 8-year-old girl nearby, Iraqi Col. Eidan al-Jubouri said. Mosul is 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Saddam Aides to Die This Week

Culled From BBC

The Iraqi government has said that the executions of two senior associates of former leader Saddam Hussein will take place some time during the week.

CONDEMNED MEN

Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti (right) - Saddam Hussein's half-brother, former head of the intelligence service

Awad al Bandar - former chief judge of Revolutionary Court

This is despite an appeal from the new UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, that they should not go ahead.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the execution orders for Barzan al-Tikriti and Awad al-Bandar had been signed, and there was no way back.

Saddam Hussein's execution has led to a chorus of international criticism.

Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein's intelligence chief, and Awad al-Bandar, a former chief judge, were convicted along with Saddam Hussein for their part in the killing of 148 Shia Muslims in the Iraqi village of Dujail in the 1980s.

Mr Dabbagh said that while the government respected the UN's view, it also had to respect the victims of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen.

"Certainly, the execution orders have been signed and are ready to be implemented," he said.

"There are some technical preparations that need to take place in order to carry out the court's decision."

Saddam Hussein was hanged on 30 December amid chaotic scenes.

I think we can sum this up as a deplorable set of events... completely unacceptable Gordon Brown, UK Chancellor

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had been criticised for saying nothing on the issue, has now joined the critics.

His officials now say the prime minister does believe the way Saddam Hussein was taunted and filmed before he was hanged was completely wrong.

Earlier, the man expected to succeed Mr Blair as prime minister, Chancellor Gordon Brown, described events at the execution as deplorable and completely unacceptable.

'Domestic affair'

Mr Ban has been criticised for failing to state the UN's policy of opposing the death penalty.

He said capital punishment "was for each and every member state to decide" - words that seemed at odds with the UN's policy of opposing the death penalty.

But in a letter to the Iraqi representative at the UN, Mr Ban urged restraint in carrying out death sentences imposed by the Iraqi High Tribunal.

The UN said Mr Ban's letter "also refers to the secretary general's view that all members of the international community should pay due regard to all aspects of international humanitarian and human rights laws".

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has reacted angrily to the international outcry over the execution.

He said his government could review relations with any country that criticised the action.

Mr Maliki said the hanging was a "domestic affair" for the benefit of Iraq's unity, adding that the former president had received a fair trial.

International protest has continued, however. On Saturday Rome's mayor lit up the Colosseum to highlight Italy's support for a global ban on the death penalty.

Italy this week began a diplomatic push to have the issue taken up by the UN General Assembly.

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi called the execution a "political and historic error".

Several Sunni Arab countries have criticised the hanging as sectarian.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said it had turned the former leader into a martyr.

Saddam speaks from beyond grave to give orders on genocide

By Ned Parker in Baghdad

Saddam Hussein spoke from beyond the grave when prosecutors played a purported audiotape of his voice yesterday during the trial for the genocide of Iraqi Kurds which resumed in the absence of the hanged dictator.

The seat that he had occupied for 15 months stayed empty as six other defendants took their places in the courtroom. Judge Muhammad al-Oreibi al-Khalifa announced that the court had dropped all charges against him over the 1987-88 military campaign against the Kurds.

Saddam had been on trial for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity over his offensive, named Anfal (the spoils of war), which prosecutors claimed killed 182,000 people. But his execution for ordering the deaths of 148 Shias from the village of Dujail in the 1980s brought an end to that case. The charges were dropped under a 1971 law terminating cases against a person who has died, said an official from the office of the Prime Minister.

Yesterday the chief prosecutor, Munqith al-Faroon, played an audiotape in which, he said, the dictator had given approval for using chemical weapons in places crowded with Kurds. “I will take responsibility for using the chemical weapons. No one can direct the strike without my approval,” the purported voice of Saddam was heard saying. “It is better to use this weapon in crowded places to be effective on as many people as possible.

“We have to remove the Kurdish people to other governorates and countries, to end the Kurdish nationality and to stop saboteurs’ acts. We have to allow them to live and work in Tikrit so that they will become Arabs.”

Mr al-Faroon did not reveal when the tape was recorded or to whom Saddam was speaking.The attention now shifts to Saddam’s cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, called “Chemical Ali” for using chemical weapons as he led the campaign against the Kurds. Mr al-Majid, like Saddam, has been charged with genocide; the five co-accused remaining are charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

During yesterday’s session Mr al-Faroon presented a video clip that he claimed showed Mr al-Majid plotting chemical attacks. “I will attack them with chemical weapons,” he was heard shouting twice in the video, which also showed children and women killed by chemical weapons. Mr al-Majid, in military uniform, is shown expressing disdain for world reaction. “To hell with the international community,” he shouts. When the video was played, Mr al-Majid, now an ageing man who walks with a cane, stayed silent.

Some fear that Saddam’s death will undermine the prosecution’s case. On issues such as responsibility for criminal acts, the defendants can now refer all questions to him. “If I were Ali Hassan al-Majid, I’d say I had nothing to do with that, go ask Saddam Hussein,” Joost Hiltermann, of the think-tank International Crisis Group, said.

Yesterday Kurds seemed to have lost interest in the trial that had been their passion when Saddam was alive. “I lost my brother in Anfal. I was watching the trial, but I wanted to see Saddam die at the end of the Anfal trial. Now I don’t want to watch it,” said Nasireen Ahmed, 43, in Kirkuk.

Genocide charges against Saddam Dropped

By David Byers

Genocide charges against Saddam Hussein for the killing of 180,000 Kurds in the 1980s have been dropped in his absence as the case against six co-defendants resumed.

As the trial of those accused of the al-Anfal killings re-started this morning, including that of Saddam's cousin often referred to as 'Chemical Ali,' the accused ex-dictator's seat was empty after he went to the gallows on December 30.

Shortly after the case re-started this morning, the chief judge dropped the case against Saddam in his absence. The ex-dictator was hanged after being found guilty in an earlier trial of the killing of 148 Shia Muslims in the town of Dujail, but many Kurds were disappointed that he was executed before facing justice for his role in the al-Anfal campaign, which was numerically the most serious of his crimes and one which drew horror and revulsion around the world.

Speaking at the start of this morning's case, Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, the chief judge, said the court decided to stop all legal action against the former president, since "the death of defendant Saddam death was confirmed".

Saddam was hanged in a chaotic execution which led to global criticism. As the tyrant was taken to the gallows, mobile phone footage taken by observers was transferred all over Iraq and placed on the Internet. It showed Saddam being taunted and becoming involved in slanging matches with his executioners and observers.

International observers feared that the manner of the execution could simply lead to an increase in the sectarian violence in the divided country.

All seven defendants in the al-Anfal case, including Saddam, had denied charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Saddam and one other man also pleaded not guilty to the additional charge of genocide.

After the decision to drop charges against Saddam, a bailiff called out the names of the other accused, and the six men walked silently into the courtroom one after another.

Saddam Hussein's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" because of his alleged use of chemical weapons against the Kurds, started the trial by trying to read a prayer from the Koran in memory of Saddam, but the judge ordered him to stop. He also wore a long beard as a sign of mourning.

The defence claims that the campaign - codenamed al-Anfal, or "the spoils of war" - was a legitimate operation to quell a rebellion after some Kurds sided with the enemy during the Iran-Iraq war while the prosecution and the West labels it as a war crime and genocide.

The trial had been in recess since 21 December. Its resumption will throw the spotlight back on the Iraqi judicial system, which came under international criticism for the handling of Saddam's execution.

After the chaotic execution, the United Nations called for a stay of execution for two others sentenced to death in the Dujail trial, but the Iraqi Government says the execution of Barzan al-Tikriti and Awad al-Bandar - the other parties found guilty alongside Saddam - will take place this week.

Meanwhile, Tony Blair's spokesman said on Sunday that the manner of Saddam's killing was "completely wrong." The Prime Minister's comments, which he is expected to reiterate personally this week, followed similar condemnations by Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr Blair's expected successor when he leaves office later this year, along with John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, and Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary.

New video of Saddam's Corpse on Internet

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer

A new video of Saddam Hussein's corpse, with a gaping neck wound, was posted on the Internet early Tuesday, the second leaked release of clandestine pictures from the former leader's hanging.

The video appeared to have been taken with a camera phone, like the graphic video of the hanging which showed guards taunting Saddam in the final moments of his life.

The footage pans up the shrouded body of the former leader from the feet. It apparently was taken shortly after Saddam was executed and placed on a gurney. He was hanged shortly before dawn on Dec. 30.

As the panning shot reaches the head region, the white shroud is pulled back and reveals Saddam's head and neck.

His head is unnaturally twisted at a 90 degree angle to his right. It shows a gaping bloody wound, circular in shape, about an inch below his jaw line on the left side of his neck. His left cheek is marked with red blotches, and there is blood on the shroud where it covered his head.

The newest video leak was likely to increase the angry reaction over the way the execution was carried out. There already has been a global outcry about the undignified manner in which the Shiite-dominated government hanged Saddam, a Sunni.

The 27-second video was posted on an Iraqi news Web site that is known to support Saddam's outlawed Baath Party.

"A new film of the late immortal martyr, President Saddam Hussein," the web site said in a headline over a link to the video.

Voices could be heard on the video. As the shroud is pulled back, one voice says, "Hurry up, hurry up. I'm going to count from one to four. One, two ... . Hurry up you're going to get us into a catastrophe."

Then another voice, apparently the man taking the pictures, says, "Just one second, just one second, Abu Ali. I'm about finished."

Then a third voice says, "Abu Ali, you take care of this."

It was the second clandestine video to have leaked, the first showing Saddam being taunted in his final moments. That clandestine video showed the former leader dropping through the gallows floor as he offered chanted prayers. It ends with his dead body swinging at the end of a rope.

The hanging video was in sharp contrast with an official video that was broadcast not long after Saddam's execution which showed him standing silently on the gallows as the noose was put around his neck. The official video was muted.

The leaked hanging video, however, was shot from the floor of the gallows chamber, looking up at Saddam. Voices could be heard taunting him with cries of "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada," referring to radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia and a key support of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The prime minister pushed for Saddam to be executed before the end of 2006 and just four days after the death sentence was upheld by the appeals court. U.S. official sought to delay the execution.

Iraq Trial Tapes tell of 'Extermination' Plan

Culled From CNN

Saddam Hussein and his cousin "Chemical Ali" discussed killing thousands with chemical weapons before unleashing them on Kurds in 1988, according to tapes played on Monday in a trial of former Iraqi officials.

Nine days after Hussein's hanging, his front-row seat in the dock was conspicuously empty, but Ali Hassan al-Majeed and five other Baath party officials remained on trial for their roles in the 1988 Anfal, or Spoils of War, campaign in northern Iraq.

"I will strike them with chemical weapons and kill them all," a voice identified by prosecutors as that of Majeed, Hussein's cousin and a senior aide, is heard saying.

"Who is going to say anything? The international community? Curse the international community," the voice continued.

"Yes, it's effective, especially on those who don't wear a mask immediately, as we understand," another voice, identified as Hussein, is heard saying on another tape.

"Sir, does it exterminate thousands?" a voice asks back.

"Yes, it exterminates thousands and forces them not to eat or drink and they will have to evacuate their homes without taking anything with them, until we can finally purge them," the voice identified as Hussein answers.

Prosecutors did not explain who ordered the recordings or when or why they were made and court officials could not elaborate. Audiotapes have been introduced in the court before and Hussein is believed to have recorded some of his meetings.

Prosecutors: Anfal campaign killed 180,000

Prosecutors said 180,000 people were killed, many of them gassed, in the Anfal campaign.

Many Kurds regret the chief suspect can no longer face justice for his role in the campaign against them, but they hope others share his fate on the gallows.

Hussein was hanged on December 30 after being convicted in an earlier trial for his role in killing 148 Shiites in the 1980s.

Majeed, who faces charges of genocide, is considered the main enforcer of the Anfal campaign.

Defendants have said Anfal was a legitimate military operation targeting Kurdish guerrillas who had sided with Shiite Iran during the last stages of the Iraq-Iran war.

Chief Prosecutor Munqith Faroon also played on Monday video showing women and children lying dead on village streets and mountain slopes after what he said was a chemical attack ordered by Hussein.

"These are the honorable battles they claimed to have launched against the enemy," he told the court.

Hussein death ends charges against him

Judge Mohammed al-Ureybi, in his first order of business, formally dropped charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against Hussein.

He cut off the microphones when Majeed stood up and started to read the Quran in tribute to his former chief.

"In virtue of the confirmation of the death of defendant Saddam Hussein, the court decided to finally stop legal procedures against defendant Saddam Hussein according to the Iraqi Penal Procedures Law," Ureybi told the court.

Looking tired and sporting an uncharacteristic white stubble, Majeed refused to take his chair and insisted on reading a line from the Quran as he stood behind Hussein's empty chair.

"Make him sit down, make him sit down," Ureybi ordered the bailiffs.

Furor over execution continues

For supporters of the U.S.-sponsored High Tribunal, Monday was a day to return the focus to sober judicial process after the undoubted embarrassment that illicit video of Hussein's execution has brought to a court judging Iraq's former rulers while its current government is struggling to avert civil war.

Yet controversy over Hussein's last minutes and the sectarian taunts he faced from Shiite officials on the scaffold goes on.

Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government in Iraq has yet to complete an investigation into the jeers and the video -- one court officer has accused a senior official of filming the event -- and al-Maliki has offered a robust defense of the execution.

But his government has found itself on the receiving end of one of the first public appeals by the new United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, whose chief of staff has written to Baghdad urging "restraint" in the use of the death penalty.

British Finance Minister Gordon Brown, the likely next prime minister of Washington's main ally in occupying Iraq, called the execution "deplorable." A spokeswoman for outgoing leader Tony Blair has said he believes the way the hanging was done was "completely wrong."

Two of Hussein's aides, his half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former judge Awad al-Bander, are likely to be hanged any day now after being convicted along with Hussein for killing Shi'ites.