NYT: One of the two men holding a cellphone, was Iraq national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie

[sabra]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/world/middleeast/03iraq.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&oref=slogin

<snip>

The American official said that Mr. Maliki had never fully explained his urgency in carrying out the death sentence, which was upheld last Tuesday in an appeals court ruling that set off a 30-day countdown for executions to be carried out after a final appeal has been turned down. But the prime minister gave one explanation that appeared to weigh heavily on his mind, the American said, and that was his fear that Mr. Hussein might be the subject of an insurgent attempt to free him if the procedural wrangling over the execution were protracted.

...

Mr. Maliki seemed equally keen 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.

...

Sami al-Askari, a Shiite member of Parliament who attended the hanging, said in a telephone interview that the committee would question everyone present at the execution. He said those who used their cellphones to record the event would be one focus of the inquiry. He said his own observation was that the worst sectarian taunts had come from a guard he described as a poorly educated Shiite man with a thick Arabic accent, and not from the officials who attended, or from the executioners.

[mediaman007]

1. Just the little bit of graphics of the lynching reminded me

of the Henry Fonda movie: The OxBow Incident." I imagine the the Iraq government will have enough executions in the future, so they can develop a "death system" that would be a little more formal.

Just another W* "snafu."

[Babel_17]

2. TPM has caught the scent also

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/011767.php

<snip>

"Apparently everyone else had had their cell phones confiscated, even al-Faroun.

Now, stay with me.

It turns out that at least one official in Maliki's government spoke to CNN by cellphone from the execution chamber just moments after the sentence had been carried out. In a report which appeared overnight on December 29th ..."

<end snip>

[keta11]

3. Mowaffak al-Rubaie probably tasked with

capturing the grissly scene for the later viewing pleasure of the Nazi High Command - Cheney, Bush,and Rumsfeld. You can just imagine the anticipation those 3 devils were awaiting the "secret video" until it was inadvetently leaked to the press and Youtube. Now the whole world is on to their "secret pleasure".

LOL!!!1 What a bunch of sickos!