AP
 
Baghdad, Dec 3: The person believed to have recorded Saddam Hussein's execution on a cellphone camera was arrested Wednesday, an adviser to Iraq's Prime Minister said.

 
The adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the media, did not identify the person. But he said it was "an official who supervised the execution" and who is "now under investigation."

"In the past few hours, the government has arrested the person who made the video of Saddam's execution," the adviser said.

Iraqi state television broadcast an official video of Saturday's hanging, which had no audio and never showed Saddam's actual death. But the leaked cellphone video showed the deposed leader being taunted in his final moments, with witnesses shouting "Go to hell!" before he dropped through the gallows floor and died.

The unruly scene was broadcast on Al-Jazeera television and was posted on the Internet, prompting a worldwide outcry and big protests among Iraq's minority Sunnis, who lost their preferential status when Saddam was ousted in the US-led invasion of March 2003.