AP Photo/Karen Ballard/Pool-FileIn this image cleared by the US military, Saddam Hussein appears in a courtroom at Camp Victory, a former Saddam palace on the outskirts of Baghdad, in this file photo from July 1, 2004. State-run Iraqiya television has reported Saddam Hussein has been executed.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) " Saddam Hussein is dead, Iraq's state-run television reported Saturday, or just before 7 tonight Pacific time.
Iraqiya television reported the 69-year-old former dictator had been hanged, while playing patriotic music and showing images of national monuments and other landmarks.
"Criminal Saddam was hanged to death," the station said in an announcement.
Along with Saddam, Iraqi authorities hanged his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, according to state television.
Saddam was killed 56 days after he was convicted and sentenced to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims in a town where he survived a 1982 assassination attempt.
The former dictator's lawyers had filed a last-minute court challenge with a U.S. judge today, but he refused to stop the execution.