Video of Saddam Hussein execution

A video of the execution of Saddam Hussein is posted in a number of places on the Internet. The video looks like it was shot with a cell phone but it is authentic. Although I will not embed it on this blog, I will provide a link. The content is graphic in the sense that you are watching a person die. Before watching it, I suggest you read this description of it:

In the televised video, Saddam stood stoically as the noose was slipped over his head. Then the Iraqi TV footage ended.
But the camera phone video, broadcast in part on Al-Jazeera and aired in full on Arabic-language Web sites, continued.
One of the official witnesses to the execution called out praise for Dawa Party founder and Shiite cleric Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, who was executed along with his sister by Saddam in 1980. The Islamic party has been locked in a fierce decades-old battle with Saddam's now outlawed secular Baath party. Muqtada al-Sadr, the powerful and radical Shiite cleric in Iraq, is a distant relative of the Dawa founder.
Saddam appeared to smile at those taunting him from below the gallows, and said they were not showing their manhood.
Then Saddam began reciting the "Shahada," a Muslim prayer that says there is no god but God and Muhammad is his prophet.
"Saddam did so but with sarcasm," Haddad said.
Saddam made it to midway through his second recitation of the verse. His last word was Muhammad.
The floor dropped out of the gallows, there was a crash and the chamber erupted in shouting.
"The tyrant has fallen," someone called. The video showed a close-up of Saddam's face as he swung from the rope.
Then came another voice: "Let him swing for three minutes."
Asked if Saddam suffered, Haddad told the BBC: "He was killed instantly, I witnessed the impact of the rope around his neck and it was a horrible sight."
Iraqi television broadcasts included a shaky image of the aftermath: a shot of what appeared to be Saddam's corpse, laid out on a hospital gurney, his head wrenched grotesquely to the right. His neck appeared to be bruised.

-- Associated Press

To watch the cell phone video of the execution, click here.
UPDATE: Here's new video of Saddam's corpse on a gurney after the execution.
UPDATE: Here's a link to a blog with the video of Saddam's body on the gurney plus some still grabs from the video.
UPDATE: To watch TV video of the body of Saddam Hussein on a gurney after the execution, click here.


Here's the link to the Washington Post's Life and Death of a Dictator project (pictured above).