Guards in Saddam video identified

Investigators have identified two guards who illicitly filmed Saddam Hussein's execution, an official said yesterday, as the Iraqi government sought to dampen growing outrage from Sunni Arabs over the unruly hanging.

Meanwhile, two bombs exploded near a petrol station in Baghdad's western Mansour district, killing at least 13 people and wounding 22, police said.

The US military said there had been a lull in violence over the Eid al-Adha holiday, but that US forces were still braced for a possible backlash.

The mobile phone video of Shi'ite officials taunting Saddam on the gallows has inflamed sectarian passions in a country on the brink of civil war.

"Two Justice Ministry guards have been arrested. Other guards have identified them as having filmed the hanging," Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's aide Sami al-Askari said.

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told a news conference: "The investigation is ongoing and we have identified those who flouted the rules... Even for a dictator like Saddam, the law must be obeyed."

A prosecutor who attended the execution said he had seen two senior officials filming the hanging, prompting suggestions among some Iraqis that the guards might be used as scapegoats.

The images, which show observers yelling "Go to hell" and chanting the name of a radical Shi'ite cleric before Saddam falls through the trap, have sparked angry demonstrations by Saddam's fellow Sunnis, fearful of Shi'ite ascendancy. Moderate Sunnis say it deals a blow to Maliki's call for reconciliation.

Philip Alston, the United Nations' special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said the "humiliating" way in which Saddam was put to death was a clear violation of international human rights law.

Saddam aides to hang

Bahaa al-Araji, a lawmaker for radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's political group, said he believed the executions of Barzan al-Tikriti, one of Saddam's half-brothers and his former intelligence chief, and Awad al-Bander, a former judge, would be delayed until Sunday, the first working day after the weekend and the Eid al-Adha holiday.

Mr Maliki has already signed the death warrants - in red ink - as part of an order authorising the execution of Saddam.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour urged Iraq not to execute the men out of respect for international law and concerns over the fairness and impartiality of the trial. Mr Maliki had brushed aside a similar appeal from Ms Arbour before Saddam was executed, and shocked many in Iraq and the rest of the Muslim world by having him hanged on the first day of Eid.

Hundreds of Shi'ites yesterday marched in the southern city of Basra to support the execution in a demonstration organised by the local office of Mr Maliki's Dawa party.