Saddam Hussein was buried shortly before sunrise Sunday in a family plot next to the graves of his two sons, witnesses said. Those who saw the ceremony said only a few people were present for the burial in Ouja, where Saddam was born in 1937.
The Tikrit burial was facilitated after negotiations in Baghdad between the government and U.S. officials and a delegation that included the governor of Salahuddin Province and the head of Saddam Hussein's Albu-Nassir clan, Al-Arabiya satellite television reported late Saturday.
Outside the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi, west of the capital, loyalists marched with Saddam pictures and waved Iraqi flags. Defying curfews, hundreds took to the streets vowing revenge in Samarra, north of Baghdad, and gunmen paraded and fired into the air in support of Saddam in Tikrit, close to his hometown.
According to the AP, police blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took into the streets, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air and calling for vengeance. Security forces also set up roadblocks at the entrance to another Sunni stronghold, Samarra, and a curfew was imposed after about 500 went into the streets to protest the execution.
Meanwhile, new video, first aired by Al-Jazeera satellite television early Sunday, had sound of someone in the group watching Saddam's execution hailing the founder of the Shiite Dawa Party, who was executed in 1980 along with his sister by Saddam.
Saddam appeared to smile at those taunting him from below the gallows. He said they were not showing manhood.
Then Saddam began reciting the "Shahada," a prayer that says there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger, according to a copy of the same tape, apparently shot with a camera phone and posted on a Web site.
Saddam made it to midway through his second recitation of the verse. His last word was Muhammad. The floor dropped out of the gallows. "The tyrant has fallen," someone in the group of onlookers shouted. The video showed a close-up of Saddam's face as he swung from the rope. Then came another voice: "Let him swing for three minutes."
