Saddam Hussein was hanged at dawn on Saturday, 30th December 2006 for crimes against humanity after Iraq's prime minister rushed through an execution few believed would help stem the sectarian violence tearing the country apart. The former president, toppled by the U.S. invasion four years ago, was shown on state television going calmly to his death on the scaffold. He was to be buried within hours near his home city of Tikrit.He and two co-defendants were sentenced to death by an Iraqi court in November after a trial over the 1982 killings of 148 Shias in the town of Dujail. People receive extra editions of a newspaper reporting the execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Iraq, at Tokyo's Ginza shopping district December 30, 2006. It was very quick. He died right away," an official witness said, adding that the body was left to hang for 10 minutes and he was pronounced dead at 6:10 a.m. (0310 GMT). The bearded Saddam, still robust at 69, refused a hood and declined to have a cleric present, but said a brief prayer on the gallows once used by his own secret police. Grainy video later showed his body in a white shroud, the neck twisted and blood on a cheek. It was taken to Awja, his native village near Tikrit, and his family said later he would be buried in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi.
"After the family received the will of the martyred president from lawyers who last met him where he asked to be buried either in Awja or Ramadi...it was decided to bury him in the city of Ramadi," a family statement received by Reuters said. Three decades after Saddam established his personal rule by force, the execution closed a chapter in Iraq's history marked by war with Iran and a 1990 invasion of Kuwait that turned him from ally to enemy of the United States and impoverished his oil-rich nation.
However, as U.S. President George W. Bush said in a statement, sectarian violence pushing Iraq towards civil war had not ended.
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