This video image released by the Biladi TV stations appears to  show the body of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein wrapped in a  white shroud following his execution Saturday.

BAGHDAD (AP) - Saddam Hussein struggled briefly after American military guards handed him over to Iraqi executioners. But as his final moments approached and masked executioners slipped a black cloth and noose around his neck, he grew calm.  In a final moment of defiance, he refused a hood to cover his eyes.  Hours after Saddam faced the same fate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during a quarter-century of ruthless power, Iraqi state television showed grainy video of what it said was his body, the head uncovered and the neck twisted at a sharp angle.  A man whose testimony helped lead to Saddam's conviction and execution before sunrise said he was shown the body because "everybody wanted to make sure that he was really executed."  "Now, he is in the garbage of history," said Jawad Abdul-Aziz, who lost his father, three brothers and 22 cousins in the reprisal killings that followed a botched 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam in the Shiite town of Dujail.

30.12.2006. 08.43 am India
Iraqi TV Says Saddam Hussein Executed

Saddam execution '6am Baghdad time' 
 BAGHDAD, Iraq. Saddam Hussein will be executed before 6am Saturday Baghdad time (3am GMT), a senior Iraqi government official has said. The time was agreed upon during a meeting between US and Iraqi officials, said the official, who declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media. "The time has been agreed upon. It will be done by six o'clock in the morning," the official said.  Ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, who was hanged on Saturday, brutally crushed any internal challenge to his despotic rule in Iraq for 24 years. Saddam Hussein, the shotgun-waving dictator who ruled Iraq with a remorseless brutality for a quarter-century and was driven from power by a U.S.-led war that left his country in shambles, was taken to the gallows and executed Saturday, Iraqi state-run television reported.
 

Saddam and his two co-accused — his half brother and intelligence chief Barzan Hassan al-Tikriti and revolutionary court judge Awad Ahmed al-Bandar — were convicted of crimes against humanity by an Iraqi court on November 5. Also hanged were Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court.

It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. presidents. Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict.

State-run Iraqiya television news announcer said "criminal Saddam was hanged to death and the execution started with criminal Saddam then Barzan then Awad al-Bandar."

The station earlier was airing national songs after the first announcement and had a tag on the screen that read "with Saddam's execution marks the end of a dark period of Iraq's history."

A U.S. judge on Friday refused to stop Saddam's execution, rejecting a last-minute court challenge.

The execution came 56 days after a court convicted Saddam and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from a town where assassins tried to kill the dictator in 1982. Iraq's highest court rejected Saddam's appeal Monday and ordered him executed within 30 days.

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