Ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was to be executed before sunrise on Saturday, officials said, amid fears of an insurgent backlash once he mounts the gallows. An Iraqi judge who has been assigned to witness Saddam's death, Moneer Haddad, told AFP that he had been summoned to attend the hanging within the coming few hours.
Meanwhile, an Iraqi official close to the office of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said that the former strongman's execution would be carried out before sunrise marks the start of the festival of Eid al-Adha.
The only formality remaining, he said, was the transfer of Saddam from US military custody to Iraqi authority, but that this had been agreed and would not delay proceedings.
"The meeting with the Americans is over," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "They decided Saddam will be hanged before 6:00 am."
Haddad, the member of the judicial panel that on December 26 threw out Saddam's appeal and who has been assigned to witness the death, said: "They called me and asked me to come."
State television, which spent Friday evening preparing the public for Saddam's death by playing footage of torture and murder carried out by his forces, said the execution would take place between 5:30 am and 6:00 am.
Earlier, Sami al-Askari, a member of Iraq's main Shiite parliamentary bloc and a consultant to Maliki, said: "All documents relating to the implementation of the execution are compiled and ready."
"Saddam has only a very short time ahead of the implementation of the execution. The execution will be either before dawn on Saturday, or immediately after the Eid holiday," Askari told AFP.
Eid al-Adha, the "feast of sacrifice", will begin at the weekend and last until Wednesday night, and Iraqi officials have already said that it would be unlikely that an execution be carried out during a religious holiday.
Baghdad was rocked by explosions and heavy gunfire as night fell Friday.
Saddam's defence counsel fed speculation about the execution by announcing that he had been asked to send someone to collect Saddam's belongings from the US base where he is being held, suggesting the hour was almost at hand.
Lead defence counsel Khalil al-Dulaimi said he had been asked to come and pick up the personal effects of Saddam and his half brother Barzan al-Tikriti, who has also been sentenced to hang for the killing of 148 Shiite villagers.
In a last desperate bid to prevent the execution, and one that seemed doomed to fail, the defence team filed a last minute request for a stay of execution with a US judge in Washington, the Justice Department said.
The White House said Saddam was still in US military custody and that his fate was "an issue for the Iraqi government. We are observers to this process."
The head of Iraq's interior ministry command centre, Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf, said the country's beleaguered security forces were on high alert ahead of a hanging expected to exacerbate sky-high sectarian tensions.
"Certainly, this is a big event, putting into effect the execution of this serial killer," he said. "We will take measures proportionate to this event. We will put all our forces on the streets so that no lives are jeopardised."
On November 5, when Saddam was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death, protests erupted in some parts of Iraq and authorities declared a three-day curfew to prevent attacks by Sunni insurgents.
Khalaf said such a measure could only be decreed by the prime minister, but Iraqi forces stood ready to act once informed of the date of the execution.
On December 26, a panel of appeals court judges confirmed Saddam's conviction for crimes against humanity in the killing of the Shiite villagers, and ordered that he and two former aides be hanged within 30 days.
In the almost four years since a US-led invasion drove Saddam from office, the oil-rich Middle Eastern nation has been engulfed in a rising tide of violence between warring political and sectarian factions.
Iraq's Shiite Arab majority and breakaway Kurds welcomed Saddam's fall, but many members of the Sunni Arab minority flocked to the banner of Islamist or pro-Saddam insurgent groups battling his US-backed successors.
The execution, when it comes, can be expected to further deepen the sectarian divide. Shiite hardliners hope that it will knock the heart out of the insurgency, but other observers fear violent reprisals.
