SADDAM Hussein, the dictator who ruled Iraq with remorseless brutality for a quarter of a century, was executed today.

It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader.

He was hanged just before 3 am British time, and, according to Iraqi state television, the execution was filmed and a doctor was present.

On the gallows, Saddam refused to wear a hood and shouted: ‘God is great.’ 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 on Monday and ordered him executed within 30 days.

Early today a US judge refused to stop Saddam’s execution, rejecting a last-minute court challenge.

In a farewell message to Iraqis posted on the internet on Wednesday, Saddam said he was giving his life for his country as part of the struggle against the US.

‘Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if he wants, he will send it to heaven with the martyrs,’ he said.

The message called on Iraqis to put aside the sectarian hatred that has bloodied their nation for a year and voiced support for the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency against US-led forces, saying: ‘Long live jihad and the Mujahedeen.’ Saddam urged Iraqis to rely on God’s help in fighting ‘against the unjust nations’ that ousted his regime.

Baghdad was relatively quiet after the announcement and the government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did when Saddam was convicted on 5 November to thwart any surge in retaliatory violence.

In the Shiite enclave of Sadr City, some people danced and fired guns in the air to celebrate the former dictator’s death.

At his death, Saddam was in the midst of a second trial, charged with genocide and other crimes for a 1987-88 military crackdown that killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds in northern Iraq.

Experts said the trial of his co-defendants was likely to continue despite his execution.

The execution was carried out around the start of Eid al-Adha, the Islamic world’s largest holiday, which marks the end of the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj.

Many Muslims celebrate by sacrificing domestic animals, usually sheep.

Sunnis and Shiites throughout the world began observing the four-day holiday at dawn today, but Iraq’s Shiite community, the country’s majority, will start celebrating tomorrow.

‘We wanted him to be executed on a special day,’ national security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said.

Al-Rubaie said Saddam ‘totally surrendered’ and did not resist.

He said a judge read the sentence to Saddam, who was taken in handcuffs to the execution room just before 6 am local time (3 am GMT).

When he stood in the execution room, photographs and video footage were taken.

According to al-Rubaie: ‘He did not ask for anything.

He was carrying a Koran and said, ‘I want this Koran to be given to this person’, a man he called Bander.’ al-Rubaie said he did not know who Bander was.

‘Saddam was treated with respect when he was alive and after his death,’ al-Rubaie said.

‘Saddam’s execution was 100% Iraqi and the American side did not interfere.’ State-run Iraqiya television news had reported earlier this morning that Saddam’s half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, were also hanged.

But the government said later that only Saddam was executed.

US president George Bush called Saddam’s execution ‘the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime’ and said that his execution marked the ‘end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops’, but warned that his death would not halt the violence in Iraq.

The US Defence Department said American forces in Iraq were ready for any escalation of violence and closer to home, US officials said that people should be vigilant about the possibility of a terror attack associated with Saddam’s execution.