Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was executed 30 December 2006, in Baghdad, after a last minute appeal failed to halt the hanging. A special Iraqi Tribunal handed down his death sentence November 5 for the murders of 148 Shi'ite men in Dujail in 1982.
Saddam had been on trial separately since August for crimes against the Kurds of northern Iraq and faced charges of genocide for the so-called Anfal campaign in which some 180,000 Kurds were killed, some by chemical weapons. He was also due to stand trial for the 1988 gassing of 5,000 Kurds in the eastern Iraqi city of Halabja. Those trials were continuing posthumously.
