BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Film uncovered after the fall of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) shows what seems to be new evidence of brutality under his rule -- three men being executed in gruesome fashion by being blown up with explosives packed around their bodies.

Convicted in 1985 of a bomb attack that killed children in Baghdad, Saddam's security police wired them up to explosives in the desert and simply blew them up, one by one -- the whole proceedings captured on a film obtained by Reuters on Thursday.

The footage shows men in the uniforms of Iraqi security officers strapping what appears to be explosive to one of the blindfolded men and attaching wires to a large vehicle battery.

"You're going to kill me, you're going to kill me even if I confess," wails the man, apparently accused of being an Iranian agent at the height of the Iran-Iraq war.

Licking his dry lips with his tongue, he waits for death. A few seconds later, he disappears in a cloud of smoke and dust.

In the next shot, bloodied remains lie in the sand. The next man is brought up to the same spot and made to kneel. He too appears to be blown up, followed by the third.

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An Iraqi army major reads out a court ruling which says the three men are Iranian agents. It says they killed several children and a university student when they put a hand grenade into a packet of baby milk in a Baghdad square in December 1984.

Reading from a piece of paper, a military intelligence officer declares that, by presidential decree, "the Revolutionary Court dated February 12, 1985, case number 180, has ordered the death by hanging" of the three, one of them himself a student.

But they were not hanged.

The Iraqi officials applaud politely when the officer states who signed the death warrant: "Saddam Hussein, the President."

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