His trial and conviction have been mostly welcomed by the Iraqi Shiites and Kurds who suffered under his rule, but it has angered Sunni Muslims, helped to fuel a Sunni-led insurgency and done nothing to calm the increasingly chaotic sectarian violence here.

Shi’ites danced in the streets of the holy city of Najaf today and cars blared their horns in procession through Baghdad’s Shi’ite Sadr City slum.

The main Sunni television channel in the capital gave little coverage to the news — though it did show old footage of Saddam meeting former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a time when Washington helped Iraq against Islamist Iran in the 1980s.

State broadcaster Iraqiya on the other hand ran graphic footage of Saddam’s agents beheading and beating their victims.

Saddam was found guilty over the killing, torture and other crimes against the Shi’ite population of the town of Dujail after Shi’ite militants tried to assassinate him there in 1982. His appeal was rejected four days ago.

A trial witness from Dujail said he was shown the body at Maliki’s office and wept for his dead relatives.

“When I saw the body in the coffin I cried. I remembered my three brothers and my father whom he had killed. I approached the body and told him: ‘This is the well-deserved punishment for every tyrant’,” Jawad al-Zubaidi told Reuters. “Now for the first time my father and three brothers are happy.”

Before his death, the former president recited the Muslim profession of faith, one of a dozen official witnesses said.

... contd.