Saddam executed

Ousted former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was executed Saturday, officials said, the 69-year-old former strongman mounting the gallows calmly and accepting his fate with a last defiant warning.

"He said 'I hope you will be united. I was not afraid of anyone," Judge Moneer Haddad, who witnessed Saddam's execution for crimes against humanity, told AFP.

National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, told state television the former strongman made no attempt to resist his executioners, as he was led to the noose with his hands bound behind him.

Neither official, members of a small group of dignitaries who formally witnessed the execution, would say exactly where the hanging took place except that it was outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

Rubaie said Saddam's American jailers had handed him over to Iraqi officials and that there had been no US personnel in the building as the trapdoor dropped and the dictator's life was ended.

"Whether to screen it now or later is up to political leaders because this is a sensitive issue and we do not want to excite some of our people," he said, amid mounting sectarian tension.

Saddam's and 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.

Officials said that the execution of Saddam's aides had been postponed.