Hussein Sentenced To Death By Hanging

A white-haired, gray-robed man in his 50s, who identified himself only as Abbas, walked among them holding up the swaddled bones of his son Hassan. All of Abbas's sons disappeared in 1991, along with thousands of other Shiites, as Hussein's forces crushed a Shiite uprising after the Persian Gulf War.

Only last week, Abbas had recovered the remains of Hassan, who was 4 when he disappeared, after an official's chance discovery of an old grave holding five bodies. On Sunday, Abbas had been taking his son's body for burial, but when he saw the demonstration, he stopped his car in the middle of the road. Soon he was jumping up and down among the crowd, holding up Hassan's bones for all to mourn.

"Saddam took my sons from me," Abbas said. He began crying. "What was the crime that my son committed? He was only 4."

North of Baghdad, in Hussein's birthplace of Auja, black-robed women with reddened eyes walked along Saddam Hussein Road to a house belonging to members of Hussein's extended family, where they joined the women there in a kind of wake.

"The grief we are going through is unbearable, and we wish we were dead before seeing or hearing this verdict," said Suad Mohammed, 40, her voice hoarse with tears and shouting.

"What happened today at the court gives us the resolve and the power to go ahead on the road of holy war," said Marwan Hakam, a teacher in the city of Tikrit, not far from Auja. "All must now carry arms to fight the Americans."

"I have sworn by God that I shall not go home and will detonate this explosives belt on American forces," said Yahya, the Tikriti shopkeeper.

Samarra and other predominantly Sunni cities and towns also saw protests, with crowds at times shooting at or setting fire to government buildings. They revived a chant that had dominated their lives during Hussein's 24-year authoritarian rule: "Our blood and our souls we sacrifice for you, Saddam."

Many Shiites and Sunnis, however, said that the sectarian violence since Hussein was toppled by a U.S.-led invasion in 2003 has made life now far grimmer. Some warned of worse to come: "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 al-Arabiya satellite television.

Special correspondents Saad Sarhan in Najaf, Muhanned Saif Aldin in Tikrit and Saad al-Izzi, Naseer Nouri and K.I. Ibrahim in Baghdad and correspondent John Ward Anderson in Baghdad contributed to this report.