AP Photo Archive
Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein reacts as the verdict is delivered during his trial held under tight security in Baghdad. Iraq’s High Tribunal found Saddam Hussein guilty of crimes against humanity on Sunday and sentenced him to die by hanging.

As he, his half brother and another senior official in his regime were convicted and sentenced to death, Saddam yelled out, “Long live the people and death to their enemies. Long live the glorious nation, and death to its enemies!”

he trial brought Saddam and his co-defendants before their accusers in what was one of the most highly publicized and heavily reported trials of its kind since the Nuremberg tribunals for members of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime and its slaughter of six million Jews in the World War II Holocaust.

Nouri al-Maliki, the Shiite prime minister, declared the verdicts as history’s judgement on a whole era.

“The verdict placed on the heads of the former regime does not represent a verdict for any one person. It is a verdict on a whole dark era that has was unmatched in Iraq’s history,” al-Maliki said after the session.

Some feared the verdicts could intensify Iraq’s sectarian violence after a trial that stretched over nine months in 39 sessions and ended nearly 3 1/2 months ago.

Clashes immediately broke out Sunday in north Baghdad’s heavily Sunni Azamiyah district. Elsewhere in the capital, celebratory gunfire rang out.

“This government will be responsible for the consequences, with the deaths of hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands, whose blood will be shed,” Salih al-Mutlaq, a Sunni political leader, told the al-Arabiya satellite television station.

Saddam and his seven co-defendants were on trial for a wave of revenge killings carried out in the city of Dujail following a 1982 assassination attempt on the former dictator. Al-Maliki’s Islamic Dawa party, then an underground opposition, has claimed responsibility for organizing the attempt on Saddam’s life.

The death sentences automatically go to a nine-judge appeals panel, which has unlimited time to review the case. If the verdicts and sentences are upheld, the executions must be carried out within 30 days.

During Sunday’s hearing, Saddam initially refused the chief judge’s order to rise; two bailiffs pulled the ousted ruler to his feet and he remained standing through the sentencing, sometimes wagging his finger at the judge.