Baghdad, Iraq ? Iraqi authorities reported the arrests Wednesday of two guards and an official who supervised Saddam Hussein’s hanging and said the guard force was infiltrated by outsiders who taunted the former leader and shot the video showing his body dangling at the end of a rope.

The unauthorized video, which ignited protests by Saddam’s fellow Sunni Arabs in various Iraqi cities, threatens to turn the ousted dictator into a martyr. Saddam was shown never bowing his head as he faced death, and asking the hecklers whether they were acting in a manly way.

The Bush administration sent conflicting signals Wednesday about the taunting and baiting that accompanied the execution, with the White House declining to join criticism of the procedure and the State Department and U.S. military publicly raising questions about it.

Saddam, who was convicted for the killings of 148 Shiites, was dignified and courteous to his American jailers up to the moment he was handed over to the Iraqis outside the execution chamber, a U.S. military spokesman said.

He “was courteous, as he always had been, to his U.S. military police guards,” Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell said. “He spoke very well to our military police, as he always had. And when getting off there at the prison site, he said farewell to his interpreter. He thanked the military police squad, the lieutenant, the squad leader, the medical doctor we had present and the colonel that was on site.”

Although Saddam “was still dignified toward us,” Caldwell said his demeanor changed “at the prison facility when the Iraqi guards were assuming control of him.”

National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie and two other top officials variously reported one to three men were being questioned in the investigation into who heckled Saddam as he was minutes from death and took cell phone pictures of his execution.

“The investigation has already had an arrest warrant against one person and two to follow,” al-Rubaie told CNN. He said the guard force at the execution was infiltrated by an Arab television station or another outsider.

Iraqis hold pictures of the country's ousted dictator, Saddam Hussein, during a protest in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, Iraq. As arrests were announced in the video recording of Saddam's hanging, demonstrators gathered Wednesday in Tikrit to denounce the pending execution of Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim, a former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, Saddam's co-defendants in the trial.

Legal action possible

The clandestine footage appeared on Al-Jazeera television and Web sites just hours after Saddam was hanged Saturday. The tumultuous scenes quickly overshadowed an official execution video, which was mute and showed none of the uproar among those on the floor of the chamber below the gallows.

Sami al-Askeri, a Shiite lawmaker who advises Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said two “Justice Ministry guards were being questioned. The investigation committee is interrogating the men. If it is found that any official was involved, he will face legal measures.”

A second key al-Maliki adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, said, “In the past few hours, the government has arrested the person who videotaped Saddam’s execution. He was an official who supervised the execution and now he is under investigation.”

Prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon, one of 14 official witnesses to the execution, told The Associated Press that he saw two government officials using camera phones at the hanging.

“I saw two of the government officials who were … present during the execution taking all the video of the execution, using the lights that were there for the official taping of the execution,” he said. “They used mobile phone cameras. I do not know their names, but I would remember their faces.”

Caldwell said no Americans were present for the hanging and that the tumultuous execution would have gone differently had the Americans been in charge.

As the storm over the handling of the hanging gained strength, Caldwell was among several U.S. officials who suggested displeasure with the conduct of the execution.

“If you are asking me: ‘Would we have done things differently?’ Yes, we would have. But that’s not our decision. That’s the government of Iraq’s decision,” the general said.

More executions coming

Calls for clemency continued Wednesday for two other former Iraqi officials sentenced to hang for their participation in the killings of 148 men and boys from the village of Dujail in the 1980s.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour issued a statement saying she “directly appealed” to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to stay the executions of Awad Haman Bander, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, and Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam’s half-brother.

“The concerns that I expressed just days ago with respect to the fairness and impartiality of Saddam Hussein’s trial apply also to these two defendants,” Arbour said.

The prime minister’s political adviser, Sadiq al-Rikabi, said he did not know when the two would be executed. Another al-Maliki adviser, Mariam Rayis, said on al-Arabiya television that the executions would not take place today but might occur after the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, which ends Saturday.