Dec 30, 2006, 6:20 GMT
Baghdad - Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was executed early Saturday morning, four days after an Iraqi court upheld the death sentence handed down after he was convicted for the 1982 massacre in the Iraqi city of Dujail.
A file picture released by the Iraqi News Agency (INA) of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein during his speech to the nation 16 January 1999 in Baghdad. Saddam Hussein was executed early Saturday morning, four days after an Iraqi court upheld the death sentence handed down after he was convicted for the 1982 massacre in the Iraqi city of Dujail. EPA/INA
Iraqi state television reported that Saddam was killed by hanging shortly before 6 am (0300 GMT).
A top Iraqi official said Saddam's codefendant's Awad Hamed al- Bandar, former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, and Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein's half-brother and former head of the intelligence service, were not executed alongside the former dictator.
A statement by Mowaffak al-Rubai, the Iraqi security adviser, broadcast on al Arabiya and quoted by CNN said the two other men had not yet been executed 'because we want this day to have historic meaning' by hanging only Saddam.
Al Arabiya television had earlier reported that the two other men had also been executed.
'The execution ... was Iraqi from A to Z. Americans stayed outside the door,' CNN quoted al-Rubai as telling Al Arabiya.
Al-Rubai said he witnessed the execution and that Saddam was handcuffed and read his sentence. He carried a copy of the Koran, which he handed to a bystander and requested it be given to an individual, whose name was not cited by al-Rubai.
The hanging took place more than three years after Saddam's regime was toppled by a US-led invasion and after a lengthy Iraqi judicial process that resulted in his conviction and sentencing in November.
Since receiving the sentence, Saddam, 69, had made several appeals for his life, including issuing a statement urging Iraqis to rally against the execution.
The Iraqi appellate court ordered the sentence to be carried out within 30 days of Tuesday's ruling and there had been speculation it could take place at any moment since.
Saddam, had been in US custody since he was found by US troops hiding in a hole near Tikrit in December 2003 following months of living on the run.
While Saddam's death will bring closure to thousands of victims of his more than 20 years of brutal reign, there were also concerns the execution would result in an upsurge of violence.
The US military in Baghdad was on heightened alert in case of reprisals or street demonstrations. The execution took place as the Islamic world celebrates the Eid al-Adha, or the last day of 2006 that marks the end of the hajj, or month of pilgrimage.
Saddam remained defiant until the end and rejected the legitimacy of the court that convicted him for ordering the killing of 148 people in the town of Dujail in 1982 as retaliation for a plot to assassinate him.
From the beginning of the legal process against Saddam, the US government has maintained the proceedings were in the hands of the Iraqis. Several countries and the European Union expressed reservations about the death sentence, as did British Prime Minister Tony Blair, US President George W Bush's closest ally for the effort in Iraq.
Human and civil rights groups, along with Saddam's attorneys, said the trial was flawed and that the death sentence should not be carried out.
'The trial should have been a landmark in the establishment of the rule of law in Iraq after the decades of Saddam Hussein's tyranny,' said Malcolm Smart, the director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa programme said after the appeals court upheld the ruling. 'It was an opportunity missed.'
In Texas, Bush reacted to the execution by praising Saddam's trial.
'Today, Saddam Hussein was executed after receiving a fair trial - - the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime,' Bush said.
'It is a testament to the Iraqi people's resolve to move forward after decades of oppression that, despite his terrible crimes against his own people, Saddam Hussein received a fair trial,' he said. 'This would not have been possible without the Iraqi people's determination to create a society governed by the rule of law.'
There had been conflicting reports throughout Friday as to whether Saddam had been transferred from US custody to Iraqi authorities so the execution could be carried out.
It was unclear how long Saddam was in Iraqi custody before he was taken to the gallows.
Leading up to the execution, there were worries it could cause more sectarian bloodshed between Sunnis and Shiites, violence that has brought the country to the verge of civil war.
Saddam had ruled Iraq since 1979 with the support of minority Sunnis and by repressing the much larger Shiite religious group, which was widely expected to celebrate Saddam's death.
The execution could enrage Sunnis, who have fiercely resisted the US occupation and to a lesser degree the new Iraqi government. Sunnis comprised most of the insurgency against US troops and the new Shiite-dominated government, which has also faced terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq.
A larger concern, however, has been whether the execution will further inflame religious tension in the country among Sunnis and Shittes.
Saddam's trial began in July 2004 but was frequently interrupted by what began as a bumpy judicial process and led to international criticism of the process. Had Saddam not been executed, he would have likely faced another trial for the gassing of thousands of Kurds in northern Iraq in 1988, his regime's most infamous crime.
The former dictator's daughter, Raghad Saddam Hussein, has asked the Yemeni government to allow Saddam to be buried in Yemen until the situation in Iraq improves, the al-Sahwa newspaper reported.
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