BAGHDAD, Nov. 5 -- Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was found guilty Sunday of crimes against humanity for the torture and execution of more than 100 people from a small town north of Baghdad 24 years ago. He was sentenced to death by hanging.

Hussein, 69, was led into the courtroom by seven guards and immediately sat in his chair, refusing to rise for his verdict until Chief Judge Raouf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman ordered guards to force him to his feet.

Long live the people!" Hussein shouted as the verdict began. "Down with the stooges! Down with the invaders! God is great!"

Just before his appearance in court, one of Hussein's co-defendants, Awad Hamed al-Bander, the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, repeatedly bellowed "God is great!" as he, too, was sentenced to death. "On the tyrants, God is great!" he shouted. "On the colonizers, God is great! On the agents, God is great!"

Celebratory gunfire rang out over Baghdad as jubilant Iraqis expressed their happiness with the outrcome by racing to rooftops, front yards and windows to fire into the air. National television showed smiling Iraqis dancing in the streets of some cities around the country.

Hussein was convicted of ordering the killings of 148 men and boys from the town of Dujail, about 35 miles north of Baghdad, following a failed assassination attempt against him there in 1982. Hussein's presidential convoy was passing through the town when it was shot at. In response, he and other top Iraqi officials at the time order the round-up of hundreds of people, and the town's buildings were razed and it's orchards destroyed.

Ten of the people executed were boys ranging in ages from 11 to 17 at the time of the incident. The government held them in jail until they were 18, then hanged them.

The verdict climaxed a 12-month trial, conducted by the Iraqi High Tribunal and backed by the U.S. government, that arose from one of many atrocities Hussein is accused of committing during 24 years of brutal, one-man rule.

It was unclear whether trial and verdict ultimately would act as a catharsis that can help bring reconciliation and peace to this embattled country, or would be a catalyst for further violence and sectarian clashes between Shiites Muslims, who make up about 60 percent of Iraq's population, and Sunni Arabs, who account for about 20 percent.

There were no immediate reports of violence.

Sajjad Abdul Hussein Ali, a Shiite Turcoman in the northern city of Kirkuk who had three brothers executed by Hussein in the early 1980s, called the verdict "the final show, and a triumph for all the families that were victimized by the Saddam regime."

"Reconciliation will not succeed without executing him and putting an end to a dark, dirty period of our modern history, so that this will be a lesson to all dictators and tyrants," he said. "Let them know that killers shall be killed, and tyrants shall be severely punished by God."

Profile: Saddam Hussein 
 
Saddam Hussein, a fearsome ruler and one-time ally of the West has been in the international limelight since he gained power in 1979. Saddam was dictator of Iraq from July 16, 1979 until April 9, 2003, when his regime was overthrown by a United States-led invasion. As a leading member of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, which espoused secular pan-Arabism, economic modernization, and Arab socialism, Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup that brought his party to long-term power.

As Vice President under his cousin, the frail General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Saddam tightly controlled conflict between the government and the armed forces by creating repressive security forces and cementing his own firm authority over the apparatus of government.

Saddam Hussein was born in the town of Al-Awja, Iraq to a family of shepherds. His mother, Subha Tulfah al-Mussallat, named her newborn son "Saddam," which in Arabic means "one who confronts." He never knew his father, Hussein 'Abd al-Majid, who died or disappeared 6 months before Saddam was born. Shortly afterward, Saddam's thirteen-year-old brother died of cancer, leaving his mother severely depressed in the final months of the pregnancy. Saddam's mother also tried to abort the baby by attempting suicide. The infant Saddam was sent to the family of his maternal uncle, Khairallah Talfah, until he was three.

His mother remarried, and Saddam gained three half-brothers through this marriage. At about the age of ten, Saddam fled the family and returned to live in Baghdad with his uncle, Kharaillah Tulfah. In 1957, at age 20, Saddam joined the revolutionary pan-Arab Ba'ath Party, of which his uncle was a supporter.

In 1958, a year after Saddam had joined the Ba'ath party, army officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew Faisal II of Iraq. The Ba'athists opposed the new government, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted United States-backed plot to assassinate Prime Minister Qassim.

Saddam was shot in the leg, but managed to flee to Tikrit with the help of CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents. Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred to Beirut for a brief CIA training course. From there he moved to Cairo where he made frequent visits to the American embassy. During this time the CIA placed him in a upper-class apartment observed by CIA and Egyptian operatives.

He was sentenced to death in absentia. Saddam studied law at the Cairo University during his exile.

Concerned about Qassim's growing ties to Communists, the CIA gave assistance to the Ba'ath Party and other regime opponents. Army officers with ties to the Ba'ath Party overthrew Qassim in a coup in 1963. Ba'athist leaders were appointed to the cabinet and Abdul Salam Arif became president. Arif dismissed and arrested the Ba'athist leaders later that year. Saddam returned to Iraq, but was imprisoned in 1964. He escaped prison in 1967 and quickly became a leading member of the party. In 1968, Saddam rose in the ranks after a Baath coup, and by 1979 he was Iraq's president and de facto dictator.

He led Iraq through a decade-long war with Iran, and in August of 1990 his forces invaded the neighboring country of Kuwait. A US-led alliance organized by George Bush (Senior) ran Hussein's forces out of Kuwait in the Gulf War, which ended in February of 1991 with Saddam still in power. In 2002 Hussein came under renewed pressure from George W. Bush, the son of the first President Bush. In March of 2003, Hussein's regime was overthrown by an invasion of US and British forces. Hussein disappeared, but US forces captured him on 13 December 2003 after finding him hiding in a small underground pit on a farm near the town of Tikrit.

Saddam and seven co-defendants were charged with crimes against humanity in the 1982 killings of 148 people in the town of Dujail after a failed assassination attempt on the former leader. On November 05, 2006, Saddam was sentenced to death by the Baghdad court.

Bureau Report