No mercy

Seconds later, as dawn broke, the worst mass killer of modern times was dead.

No mercy was shown to the evil Butcher of Baghdad who had terrorised his country for 24 years.

The ghosts of two million victims haunted every step he took towards the gallows.

Dressed in a long black overcoat, the former Iraqi dictator showed no remorse for his atrocities as a masked hangman stepped forward to put a black hood over his head. But Saddam refused to wear it.

A recording of his journey to the gallows was shown on Iraqi TV but stopped seconds before the execution.

Later, film was shown of him draped in a white funeral shroud, his head twisted awkwardly to the right by the force of the drop.

There was jubilation in Shi'ite areas as news of the death spread, but a curfew in Baghdad meant celebrations were muted.

South of the capital in the Shi'ite town of Kufa, 17 people were killed when a bomb exploded in a fish market. Saddam, who twice took on the might of the most powerful military machine on the planet, died a common criminal's death at the end of a rope he had long used to oppress his people.

Thousands of his countrymen had been executed on clanking metal gallows which his cruel regime built and used with ruthless efficiency.

Some faced execution as martyrs, others scribbled their own courageous epitaphs on the dank prison walls, but when it was Saddam's turn he trembled with fear and muttered to himself: "Don't be afraid."

Saddam's fate was sealed after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed his death warrant.

Iraq's national security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie, who witnessed the tyrant's death at 3am British time yesterday, said: "He was very, very broken, he looked really, really weak."

Within six hours of his death, billions were watching television pictures from a handheld video that showed 69-year-old Saddam's faltering steps towards oblivion at a secret security complex on the outskirts of Baghdad dubbed Camp Justice.

With his grey-flecked hair tousled and drenched with sweat, he met his executioners, a raggle-taggle gang of men in balaclavas and leather and suede jackets, in a stark, grey-walled room that was to be his last view of the world.

In an almost surreal 59-second video, Saddam, handcuffed and dazzled by the camera's flashlight, attempts to look composed as he tells one of the hangmen that he does not want the hood placed over his head.

The black cloth is then draped around his neck before he is shuffled towards the gallows where the heavy rope dangles from its ceiling fixture.

In the final shot, the noose is pulled across his left shoulder by one of the executioners, while a colleague delicately positions the rope across Saddam's adam's apple to secure a quick and efficient death. As the world counted down the final hours of the 21st century's most reviled megalomaniac's final hours, Saddam's defiance ebbed away with the first light dawning on Baghdad's eastern horizon.

Before those first dramatic television pictures were broadcast, world leaders and politicians were reacting with relief that justice, not revenge, had finally been carried out.

President George W Bush said: "Today, Saddam Hussein was executed after receiving a fair trial – the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime. Fair trials were unimaginable under Saddam Hussein's tyrannical rule.

"Saddam Hussein's execution comes at the end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops. Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the War on Terror.

With Prime Minister Tony Blair on holiday, it was left to Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett to give Britain's reaction. She said: "I welcome the fact that Saddam Hussein has been tried by an Iraqi court for at least some of the appalling crimes he committed against the Iraqi people.

"He has now been held to account. The British Government does not support the use of the death penalty, in Iraq or anywhere else. We advocate an end to the death penalty worldwide, regardless of the individual or the crime."

In the Shi'ite enclave of Sadr City, hundreds of people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate Saddam's death.

Saddam's daughters watched their father's final moments on television. "They felt very proud as they saw their father facing his executioners so bravely, standing up," said spokeswoman Rasha Oudeh, who was with Raghd, 38, and Rana, 34, in neighbouring Jordan.

"They pray that his soul rests in peace. They were calm and faced this with courage and faith."

The death of Saddam was greeted with tears of joy – and bitter fury – in a mirror image of the shocking violence which has split the country.

In Shi'ite areas there was unconfined celebration with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets, singing, dancing with joy and firing gunshots into the morning air. But Sunni districts reacted with ferocious rage as Saddam supporters vowed to avenge his death.

Khalid al-Saada, an English translator, was on his way to the mosque at Firdus Square, where coalition soldiers had pulled down a giant statue of Saddam to signal the victory in April 2003.

"The call to prayer was happening and as I arrived at the Mosque people were coming on to the streets, shouting and crying," he said. "They were jumping in the air and I knew what had happened. Saddam was dead. I also cried, I felt so much emotion.

"I always knew this moment would arrive but I still cried. I remembered my uncle and two cousins who disappeared when Saddam was president. Their bodies were never returned and their loss has affected every member of my family."

Salih al-Abbas, a white-haired former prisoner of Saddam, said: "It is the day I have prayed would come. For all of Iraq, for all of the people who were murdered by this man, this is the day we have been waiting for.

"I want to see his body…I want to spit on it and to curse this man who has brought so much pain to us. I want the body to be pulled through the streets of Baghdad, the same way he used to drag those he executed. I want it to be pulled apart until there is nothing left but bones.

"This man does not deserve to die and for us to be left with a body…we should take it and pull it apart and throw each piece into the Tigris and let the fish eat him. That's what he deserves."

Saddam's place in the pantheon of infamy came 55 days after his death sentence was passed for the murders of 148 people in the city of Dujail as revenge for an assassination attempt in 1982.

For a man who had prosecuted the bloodiest war in modern times against his Iranian neighbours, invaded Kuwait and terrorised his own citizens with death squads and even chemical warfare, many felt that the world was entitled to hear the full panoply of his crimes.

But one show trial was enough. And with the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, the festival of sacrifice and forgiveness, due to start yesterday, the Iraqi authorities hastened the countdown to his hanging.

In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai slammed the insensitive timing of the execution. He said: "Eid is the day of happiness, the day of goodness, the day of reconciliation, not the day of revenge."

Saddam had begged to be shot as befitted his rank of four-star general but the Iraqi judiciary adhered to the same penal code with its countless capital offences to hang him as if he were a common murderer.

A little over three years after his capture and a 14-month rambling trial, his death became a formality when his last appeal was rejected earlier this week.

Since his arrest, Saddam had been held by the Americans at the high-security Camp Cropper but on Friday, with his death warrant signed, he became the property of the newly-fledged Iraqi state.

The oppressive regime in American custody may have helped persuade him that death was better than a life spent in confinement.

He was treated with the same vice-like grip of an American death row regime – an iron bed bolted to the floor, standard US issue bedding and his weekly toiletries consisting of a bar of soap, a sponge and toothpaste.

His cell had a toilet, metal washbasin and two towels and all his meals were cooked by highly-supervised Iraqis to stop any poisoning attempt.

Drinking water came from sealed bottles – part of consignments flown in from the US for its troops. Every day Saddam was taken out to a small courtyard for a period of exercise.

In the corner of the yard was a water tap and the first thing Saddam did was to turn it on. The sound of flowing water had always been a reminder for him that, in a land parched by nature, he could always command water.

Many of his waking hours were spent reading legal files and also writing a novel. It will never be published.

Once his American guard had handed Saddam into the custody of the Iraqis, a senior Iraqi commander informed him he would be dead within the hour.

He was offered a last meal – boiled chicken and rice – and drank several cups of hot water laced with honey, a favourite childhood drink. At 5.30am local time, he performed his final religious ablutions, kneeling and washing his hands, face and feet.

He then sat on the edge of his bed and began to read the Koran, a gift from his wife. But only after the death sentence had been passed had Saddam begun to study it.

Yards away in the execution chamber, final rehearsals were under way. A sack filled with builder's sand was used to test the gallows trapdoor.

Twice the trapdoor swung open and the bag plunged into the void. The hangman judged the rope had been fully stretched. At 5.45am local time two mortuary attendants arrived with a plain wooden coffin. They placed it beside the gallows platform.

By 5.50 the handful of invited witnesses stood against one wall of the execution chamber. The party included members of the Iraqi judiciary, clerics, a representative of the Iraqi government and a doctor.

Their whispers fell silent as the chamber door opened. Gripped by hooded Iraqi guards, Saddam stood there blinking in the bright TV lights.

The cameraman was in a corner of the chamber, providing a wide-angle shot of the gallows. Each time the test sack had plunged through the trapdoor, the cameraman had filmed a test video to check his framing. At 5.58 Saddam stood there for a moment longer.

Gripped firmly by the elbows, his guards then motioned him forward towards the gallows platform, while an Iraqi government official stepped forward and began to read from a single sheet of paper. It was the official death sentence.

As the world saw in a rush of video footage, Saddam refused the hood and stared ahead as the noose was put into place. Suddenly there was the sound of a lever being pushed down hard. The trapdoor swung open. Saddam's body plunged through and his neck snapped.

When it finally came to a rest and the nervous spasms had subsided, the doctor stepped forward and listened through a stethoscope for a heartbeat. There was none.

The two morticians stepped under the platform and cut the body down. The knife they used to slice through the rope looked like the kind a butcher would use.

Fifteen minutes later Saddam's body, draped in a white sheet, was photographed to prove that the most hated man in the world was finally dead.