( L - R ) Hussein and Al-maliki

BAGHDAD (Reuters):

Iraq's Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, was concerned that if Saddam Hussein was not hanged quickly, he would somehow avoid the gallows, a senior United States official in Baghdad was quoted as saying yesterday.

The official told The New York Times that Maliki, who rushed to execute Saddam four days after an appeal on his death sentence on crimes against humanity failed, was worried insurgents would stage a mass kidnapping and use it as a bargaining chip to secure the release of the former president.

"His concern was se-curity, and that ... maybe there would be a mass kidnapping to bargain for Saddam Hussein's re-lease," the official said.

"He was concerned that he might somehow get free."

After ousting Saddam in a United States (U.S.) invasion in 2003, American troops had kept physical custody of the former president in a high-security prison near Baghdad airport. He was handed over to Iraqi officials before the execution at dawn last Saturday.

A U.S. embassy official declined to comment.

As outrage among Saddam's Sunni Arab loyalists grew over illicitly-filmed footage of Shi'ite officials taunting him on the gallows, the government said it had set up a special committee to investigate the abusive behaviour of the witnesses.

A court official said he nearly halted the hanging over the jeering, which has embarrassed moderate Shi'ites and ethnic Kurds in Maliki's coalition govern-ment and inflamed sectarian passions in a nation already on the brink of civil war.

CHANTING

Thousands of Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs have marched to vent anger at the execution in Sunni Arab strongholds.

In the video, widely seen on the Internet, observers chant the name of Shi'ite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr as Saddam stands on the scaffold, appearing dignified in contrast to the uproar below him.