The body of Saddam Hussein was taken to his home town of Tikrit after his execution Saturday, and his family said the former Iraqi leader 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 said.

The statement did not say when he would be buried. It is Muslim practice to bury the dead within the day.

	Advertisement

Burying Saddam in Ramadi, 110 km west of Baghdad, instead of Awja close to where he was born, was due to "private family reasons and the prevailing security situation" in Iraq, the statement added.

Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay, were buried in the family shrine at Awja after U.S. troops killed them in mid-2003. Saddam himself was captured nearby at the end of that year.

Defense lawyer Bushra al-Khalil said Saddam's body was flown in a U.S. military aircraft to Tikrit. A senior government source told Reuters the transfer had been made by road. A U.S. military spokesman declined comment.

Yahya al-Atawi, a senior Sunni Muslim cleric in Tikrit, told Reuters by telephone from the city 180 km north of Baghdad that the head of Saddam's Albu Nasir tribe, Ali al-Nida, had received the body.

Saddam's daughter, Raghd, in exile in Jordan, had earlier asked for her father's body to be flown to Yemen for a temporary burial there until it can be transferred back to Iraq for a proper family ceremony.

An adviser to Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had earlier said the government wanted Saddam, 69, to be buried in a secret location in Iraq to prevent the site becoming a place of pilgrimage for rebels.

72 die in Baghdad
The violence in Iraq continued unabated following Hussein's death. Some 72Iraqis were killed in two bombings a few hours after the dawn hanging. In northwest Baghdad, two parked cars exploded killing 36 civilians and wounding 76. Another 36 people died and 58 were hurt south of the capital.

Saddam was executed at a former military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah, said Sami al-Askari, a prominent Shi'ite politician close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The neighborhood is home to the Iraqi capital's most important Shiite shine, the Imam Kazim shrine.

Askari witnessed the event and said the process of Saddam's execution lasted about 25 minutes, but once he was dropped through a trap door his death was very quick.

"One of the guards pulled a lever and he dropped half a meter into a trap door. We heard his neck snap instantly and we even saw a small amount of blood around the rope," Askari said.

"They left him hanging for around 10 minutes before a doctor confirmed his death and they untied him and placed him in a white bodybag," he added.

State-funded television channel Iraqiya showed the final moments of Saddam's life but stopped short of broadcasting the actual hanging or his body.

The footage showed a group of guards dressed in civilian clothes and wearing ski masks helping Saddam up a small metal staircase where a cloth was put around his neck before stepping onto the trap door. A red metal barrier, like a witness box, surrounded the trap door in the low-ceilinged, gray concrete, cell-like room.

The hangman, wearing a beige leather jacket, placed the thick rope over Saddam's head and tightened the noose on the left side of his neck. The hangman exchanged a few words with Saddam, who nodded in return.

Hussein wore a black coat over a black V-neck jumper and a white shirt and had black trousers and black shoes. Askari said he was told to take off a woolly black hat before his execution.

Another official witness confirmed Saddam died instantly.

"He seemed very calm. He did not tremble," said the official, adding that Saddam recited the Muslim profession of faith before he died: "There is no God but God and Mohammed is his prophet."

No curfew in Baghdad

The Iraqi capital was relatively quiet after the announcement, and the government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did when Saddam was convicted on November 5 to thwart any surge in retaliatory violence. In Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, some people fired guns in the air to celebrate the former dictator's death.

"Now all the victims' families will be happy because Saddam got his just sentence," said Hamza, who lives in Diwaniyah, a Shiite town 130 kilometers south of Baghdad.

"We are looking for a new page of history despite the tragedy of the past," said Saif Ibrahim, a 26-year-old Baghdad resident.

But people in the Sunni-dominated city of Tikrit, once a power base of Saddam, lamented his death.

"The president, the leader Saddam Hussein is a martyr and God will put him along with other martyrs. Do not be sad nor complain because he has died the death of a holy warrior," said Sheik Yahya al-Attawi, a cleric at the Saddam Big Mosque.

As a security precaution, police blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days.

Iraqiya initially said Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court were hanged. But National Security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie, who attended the execution, later said that only Saddam had been executed and that the two other men would be hanged after the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, which started Saturday and ends in the first week of January.

"We wanted [Saddam] to be executed on a special day," al-Rubaie told Iraqiya.

Asked if Saddam resisted, al-Rubaie said no. "He totally surrendered," he said.

He said a judge read the sentence to Saddam, who was taken in handcuffs to the execution room. When he stood in the execution room, photographs and video footage were taken, al-Rubaie said.

"He did not ask for anything. He was carrying a Koran and said: 'I want this Koran to be given to this person' a man he called Bander," he said. Al-Rubaie said he did not know who Bander was.

"Criminal Saddam was hanged to death," Iraqiya television said in an announcement. The station played patriotic music and showed images of national monuments and other landmarks.

Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations urged the world to remember the victims of Saddam Hussein in comments broadcast shortly after his execution.

In comments to CNN, Feisal al-Istrabadi welcomed the execution and recalled the many political victims during more than two decades of Saddam's brutal rule. He noted the tens of thousands who died in the bloody eight-year war with Iran.

Mariam al-Rayes, a legal expert and former member of parliament, told Iraqiya television that the execution "was filmed and God willing it will be shown. There was one camera present, and a doctor was also present there."

Al-Reyes did not attend the execution. She said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki did not attend, but was represented by an aide.

Addressing the debate over whether film or still pictures of the execution would be publicized, Feisal said a good reason to show the images is to "establish that he is dead."

The Iraqi government readied all the necessary documents, including a "red card" - an execution order introduced during Saddam's dictatorship. As the hour of his death approached, Saddam received two of his half brothers in his cell Thursday, and was said to have given them his personal belongings and a copy of his will.

Lawyers for the former leader had asked a U.S. judge earlier Friday to block his transfer to the custody of Iraqi officials poised to carry out his execution.

Hussein's lawyers filed documents Friday afternoon asking for a stay of
execution. The 21-page request was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington before Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.

Attorneys argued that because Hussein also faced a civil lawsuit in
Washington, he had rights as a civil defendant that would be violated if he is executed. He had not received notice of those rights and the consequences that the lawsuit would have on his estate, his attorneys said.

"To protect those rights, defendant Saddam Hussein requests an order of this court providing a stay of his execution until further notice of this court," attorney Nicholas Gilman wrote.

On Tuesday, an Iraqi appeals court upheld Saddam's death sentence for the killing of 148 people who were detained after an attempt to assassinate him in the northern Iraqi city of Dujail in 1982. The court said the former president should be hanged within 30 days.

"Our respect for human rights requires us to execute him, and there will be no review or delay in carrying out the sentence," al-Maliki said in comments released by his office Friday.

'Insulting' the memory of his victims

Al-Maliki said those who oppose the execution of Saddam were insulting the honor of his victims. His office said he made the remarks in a meeting with families of people who died during Saddam's rule.

In his Friday sermon, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf called Saddam's execution "God's gift to Iraqis."

"Oh, God, you know what Saddam has done! He killed millions of Iraqis in prisons, in wars with neighboring countries and he is responsible for mass graves. Oh God, we ask you to take revenge on Saddam," said Sheik Sadralddin al-Qubanji, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, known as SCIRI.

On Thursday, Saddam's chief lawyer beseeched world leaders to prevent the United States from handing over the ousted dictator to Iraqi authorities.

"According to the international conventions, it is forbidden to hand a prisoner of war to his adversary," Khalil al-Dulaimi said.

"I urge all the international and legal organizations, the United Nations secretary-general, the Arab League and all the leaders of the world to rapidly prevent the American administration from handing the president to the Iraqi authorities," al-Dulaimi said.

After Saddam's death sentence was handed down last month, Louise Arbour, the UN high commissioner for human rights, urged Iraq to ensure a fair appeals process and to refrain from executing Saddam even if the sentence is upheld.

Some international legal observers and human rights groups had also called Saddam's trial unfair because of alleged interference by the Shiite-dominated government.

Related links: