DUSHANBE, January 3, Asia-Plus - The Iraqi government has launched an inquiry into unofficial mobile phone footage showing the execution of former leader Saddam Hussein.  The mobile phone footage showed he exchanged taunts and insults with witnesses at his hanging on Saturday, December 30.

The grainy video showed the former leader being told to "go to hell" by someone attending the hanging.

One of the trial prosecutors who saw the execution said he threatened to halt it if the jeering did not stop.

Munkith al-Faroon - who can be heard appealing for order on the unofficial video - said that he had threatened to walk out.  This could have halted the execution, as a prosecution observer must, by law, be present.  Faroon also said he knew "two top officials... had their mobile phones with them [at the execution]. There were no mobile phones allowed at that time."

The Iraqi authorities fear the footage, released on the Internet hours after the execution, could contribute to a dramatic rise in sectarian tensions between Iraq''s Sunni and Shia communities.

"There were a few guards who shouted slogans that were inappropriate and that''s now the subject of a government investigation," an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, Sami al-Askari, told Reuters news agency.

BBC says Iraq''s government is desperate to clear the air, having hoped that the execution would signal the start of the reconciliation process between the Sunni and Shia communities.

But an Internet message claiming to be from Saddam Hussein''s fugitive deputy, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, said the execution would reinforce the anti-US insurgency.  "Assassinating a leader will only strengthen the will of the Baath Party... and increase their determination to escalate their jihad," the message said.

Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on November 5 over the killings of 148 Shias from the town of Dujail in the 1980s.  He was executed before dawn on Saturday in Baghdad and buried near his hometown of Tikrit a day later.

The daily cycle of violence in Iraq has continued since the execution.