Three prison officials have now been arrested for mocking Saddam Hussein in his last minutes alive and then posting on the internet a grotesque video of his execution, The Times has learnt.

"Three people have been detained. They were prison officials," a government official said, requesting anonymity. "Two of them were chanting and one was filming with a mobile."

The government investigation had questioned the 20 men, including the 14 witnesses, who were in the gallows chamber, the official said.

He ruled out the possibility that any senior officials were behind posting the grisly footage on the Internet after one witness, prosecutor Munqith Faroun, said he had watched two government members film Saddam’s hanging with their cellphone cameras.

"I’m guessing they probably did film, but they didn’t release it," the official said.

The arrested prison officials had goaded Saddam with a chant popular among the followers of radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, which one of them ended by shouting the fundamentalist leader’s name. "They were from Sadr City, but they were not militia men," the official said, referring to the Shia slum of

2.5 million people in eastern Baghdad, which Sadr controls through his Mahdi Army militia.

Earlier, Sadiq al-Rikabi, political adviser to Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, told The Times that a guard was arrested Tuesday night after an inquiry was launched into who captured the graphic footage.

"This mistake was investigated and now the person who took this video and released it has been identified and arrested last night," Mr Rikabi told The Times.

"Now we will try to find out whether he did this on purpose, whether anyone asked him to take the footage, or did he do this not recognising the consequences."

Mr Rikabi reiterated that the Prime Minister had wanted the execution of the former dictator to be a sombre affair and that all the witnesses had their phones and cameras removed from them beforehand.

"The PM did not want revenge; he wanted to implement justice," he said, adding of the arrested guard: "He will pay the price."

Times Recommends

• Thousands of Tamils dying in 'welfare camp'
• Jackson 'rebuilt his nose before he died'
• Renewed Iran protests crushed by militia