KEY POINTS:
Iraqis in Shi'ite towns and parts of Baghdad poured into the streets after Saddam Hussein was last night sentenced to death for war crimes.
Following the televised hearing there was dancing and yelling for joy at the fate of the man who oppressed them for three decades.
"The court has delivered justice for my son, who was killed by Saddam," housewife Um Hussain said in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf as crowds chanted "Death to Saddam! Die you Baathists!"
However, in Saddam's Sunni home town of Tikrit, dozens of men and boys waved his portrait and chanted the old Baath party slogan "Saddam, Saddam! I give my life and blood for you, Saddam!"
The United States, which set up the court after its invasion toppled Saddam in 2003, called it "a good day for the Iraqi people". But the European Union and the Vatican, firmly opposed to capital punishment, urged Iraq not to hang Saddam.
The court rejected his demand for an "honourable" death by military firing squad.
Instead, the former Iraqi dictator was sentenced to go to the gallows as a common criminal for the 1982 massacre of 148 people in retaliation for a bungled assassination bid.
As the verdict was delivered, a visibly shaken Saddam shouted: "God is greatest! Long live the nation!"
The judgment came as Iraq braced for new outbreaks of violence. All leave was cancelled for the Iraqi Army, and Baghdad was sealed off.
Baghdad's Shiite-led Government welcomed the verdict. "This is the least Saddam deserved," said Ali al-Dabbagh, spokesman for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
A curfew has been imposed on the northern province of Salaheddin, which includes the city of Tikrit, near 69-year-old Saddam's birthplace and a stronghold of support for him.
Saddam was defiant before the verdict.
"I will die with honour and with no fear, with pride for my country and my Arab nation, but the US occupiers will leave in humiliation and defeat," his lawyers quoted him as saying.
"They will see rivers of blood for years to come. It will dwarf Vietnam."
Massacre
The High Court verdict followed the trial of Saddam and seven others for the 1982 massacre of 148 people in Dujail, a village north of Baghdad, after an attempt to kill him failed.
The Iraqi High Tribunal also imposed death sentences on former revolutionary chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bander and Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti.
Former Iraqi vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan was sentenced to life in prison.
Saddam demanded execution by firing squad, rather than hanging, because he was head of Iraq's armed forces.
But the court has dismissed his request, saying he failed the military academy entry exam and became a field marshal only by appointing himself after he became president.
His defence team has warned that a guilty verdict will "open the gates of hell".
One of his lawyers, Bushra al-Khalil, wrote to the US ambassador in Baghdad urging him to prevent a death sentence being imposed because of the consequences.
"A death sentence against Saddam Hussein will lead to a major security flare-up in Iraq and to stepped-up attacks on the US Army."
Some Iraqi officials say the US wanted the verdict announced today to improve the standing of President George W. Bush's Republican Administration in this week's mid-term congressional elections.
Washington officials said the timing was determined solely by the Iraqi judges.
Authorities fear an escalation of savage clashes between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, which are claiming more than 100 lives a day in tit-for-tat killings and kidnappings.
Saddam is a Sunni, and many still see him as a hero, regarding his trials as political revenge by Iraq's new Shiite-led Government.
But Kurds and Shiites, who suffered under Saddam's rule, want to see him executed.
Under Iraqi law, an appeal against the death sentence will automatically go to a nine-judge panel. If the appeal is rejected the sentence must be carried out within 30 days.
Iraq and the US would then face the problem of what to do with Saddam's body.
His sons Uday and Qusay, killed by US troops in a shootout in Mosul in July 2003, are buried in Saddam's home village near Tikrit.
But burying Saddam alongside them would almost certainly make the graveyard a shrine.
US commanders believe he may be treated the same way as slain terror mastermind Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, whose body they buried in an unmarked spot in the Iraqi desert.
- REUTERS
