Saddam defiant to the very end

BAGHDAD, Iraq — In the predawn hours Saturday, ousted President of Iraq Saddam Hussein stood calmly at the gallows, a thick yellow noose around his neck, ready to die with an orderliness that now eludes Iraq. Three executioners, men in black ski masks and leather jackets, stood behind him. Saddam said "Ya Allah," preparing himself for the platform he stood on to open up.

Suddenly, witnesses recalled, the room erupted in Shiite religious chants, as the Shiite Muslims in the audience seized the moment they have long sought. One man yelled "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada," unveiling his loyalty to radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Saddam smiled, said the witnesses, and said sarcastically: "Muqtada?"

In his final moments, shortly after the dawn call for prayer, Saddam came face to face with today's Iraq, which he had never met, having spent the past three years in U.S. custody. Since his capture, the Shiites his government violently repressed have come to power. They were the last people Saddam saw before his death.

"Long live Muhammad Bakr Sadr," yelled another voice, according to a grainy videotape taken by a cellphone that was flashed on television networks on Saturday night.

Bakr Sadr is the uncle of Muqtada al-Sadr and the founder of the Islamic Dawa Party, of which Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is a senior leader.

Then, Munqith Faroun, who prosecuted Saddam, yelled: "The man is facing execution. Please don't."

The room quieted down.

According to accounts from five witnesses, as well as Iraqi and U.S. officials, as he neared death, Saddam wore ironed black pants, an ivory white shirt and a black, luxurious topcoat. His shoes were polished to a shine. He dyed his hair black and trimmed his silver beard. He waited with dignity.

Saddam began to recite an Islamic prayer.

Since Tuesday, when Iraq's highest court upheld Saddam's death sentence, it had been clear that his execution would arrive soon. The al-Maliki government had wanted to execute Saddam early Friday morning, said U.S. and Iraqi officials. But legal issues, security concerns and Iraq's political divide postponed the plan.

Shiite leaders and some moderate Sunni Arabs wanted to hang Saddam swiftly, fearing any delay could inflame violence and deepen the nation's sectarian rifts. The Kurds wanted to execute Saddam at the end of the ongoing genocide trial, in which Saddam was charged with orchestrating the killings of tens of thousands of northern Kurds, many with chemical weapons. Other politicians worried about turning Saddam into a martyr if they executed him during the Islamic holidays of Eid al-Adha.

But by late Friday, Saddam's execution papers were signed. Muneer Haddad, a judge on Iraq's appeals court, received the call at 1:30 a.m. A voice said: "Come to the Prime Minister's office at 3:30 in order to carry out the execution," recalled Haddad.

Around 5 a.m., 14 senior officials, including Haddad and Faroun, stepped into two U.S. military helicopters and flew to an Iraqi army base overlooking the Tigris River in Baghdad's Khadimiya neighborhood, Haddad said. It once housed Saddam's military-intelligence service, where his opponents were executed.

Around the same time, U.S. military officials took Saddam from his prison cell at Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad airport, and flew him to the Green Zone, the fortified enclave that houses the U.S. embassy and senior Iraqi officials. There, they handed Saddam over to the Iraqis, according to U.S. officials. The Iraqis then drove Saddam in an armored convoy to Khadimiya.

Haddad, Faroun, a justice-ministry official and others met with Saddam.

"He seemed normal, not confused nor afraid," recalled Haddad.

Saddam sat down and the verdict, finding him guilty of crimes against humanity, was read aloud.

"Long live the nation!" Saddam shouted. "Long live the people! Long live the Palestinians!"

He continued shouting until the verdict was read in full, and then he composed himself again.

At the end of the reading, Saddam's hangmen arrived.

They took Saddam to a large room with no windows, with a staircase that leads to a tall gallows with a large pit at the bottom.

"It was very cold," recalled Haddad. "It had the stench of death."

Haddad and Faroun walked with Saddam and his hangmen to the steps of the gallows. Then, one of the masked men, Haddad recalled, turned to Saddam and said:

"You have destroyed Iraq, impoverished its people, and made us all like beggars while Iraq is one of the richest countries in the world."

Saddam replied: "I did not destroy Iraq. I made Iraq into a rich powerful country."

Faroun stepped in and ordered the hangman to back away.

The general prosecutor asked Saddam to whom he wanted to give his Quran. He said Bandar, the son of Awad al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court who was also to be executed soon.

Saddam took his hat off. The hangmen uncuffed his hands, then placed them behind his back, and recuffed them. They also tied his feet together, said witnesses.

One Iraqi official asked him if he was afraid, recalled Haddad.

"I am not afraid. I have chosen this path," Saddam replied.

Then, the hangmen slowly helped him up the stairs.

The chief hangman offered Saddam a black hood and asked him to place it over his head, but he refused. The man explained that his death would be more painful. Saddam again refused, said witnesses. So the hangman folded the hood and wrapped it around Hussen's neck like a neck warmer.

"He was shivering and his face was pale," said one witness who asked not to be identified because he feared for his safety. "I think up to the moment when they put the rope around his neck, he was not believing what was happening."

Faroun saw a different Saddam. "He was holding tight. He was not scared," he said.

Saddam stepped onto the platform.

As Saddam recited his Islamic prayer for the second time, the chief hangman asked for silence. Then, the floor of the gallows was opened.

"He died in a tenth of a second," said Faroun. "He did not move a leg or foot."

His body stayed hanging for a few minutes as those in attendance broke out in prayer, praising the Prophet, at the death of a dictator.

Then, the corpse was brought down and covered in a white sheet. A doctor examined the body, and then turned around to the audience. "It's finished," he said, according to witnesses.

Saddam's body was loaded into one of the helicopters and flown to the Green Zone, where an ambulance took it away to his hometown of Tikrit.

He was buried shortly before dawn today inside a compound for religious ceremonies in the center of Ouja, the town where he was born. Few were present for the interment, according the Salahuddin province governor.

Ouja is near Tikrit, Saddam's power base 80 miles north of Baghdad.

Saddam's half brother Barzan Ibrahim and al-Bandar, the former chief justice, were originally scheduled to be hanged along with their former leader.

Iraqi officials, though, decided to reserve the occasion for Saddam alone.

Information from The New York Times, The Associated Press and Reuters is included in this report.