Ali, also a Ba'ath party official in Dujail region, was acquitted due to a lack of evidence. Execution Saddam was executed by hanging after being convicted of crimes against humanity following his trial and conviction for the illegal killings of 148 Shi'ites in the town of Dujail in 1982. He was hanged on the first day of an important Islamic holiday, Eid ul-Adha, 30 December 2006, at approximately 06:05 AM local time (03:05 UTC). The execution was carried out at "Camp Justice," an Iraqi army base in Kazimain, a neighborhood of north-east Baghdad. Reactions Reactions to the verdict : President Jalal Talabani said in a statement, "I think this trial was fair", and "I must respect the independence of the Iraqi judiciary. Until the end I must be silent." Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said the sentence may "help alleviate the pain of the widows and the orphans, and those who have been ordered to bury their loved ones in secrecy, and those who have been forced to suppress their feelings and suffering, and those who have paid at the hands of torturers" under Saddam's regime. First Deputy Speaker of the Iraqi National Assembly Khaled al-Attiyah said "we expected the maximum penalty against the criminal Saddam Hussein and his henchmen because they committed horrible crimes against the Iraqi people, the Arabs, Kurds, Muslims and the entire Western community." : External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee reacted guardedly to the death sentence, saying such verdicts should not appear to be "victor's justice" and should be acceptable to the people of Iraq and the international community. In a statement, he said "such life and death decisions require credible due process of law." : Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht believed that carrying out the death penalty on a 69-year-old would be "unethical", reported flandersnews.be. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt told the press that "justice has been done", although a spokesman for the Prime Minister later said that Verhofstadt felt that it would have been better to have tried Saddam Hussein at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. : A spokesperson for the Foreign Affairs Minister said "Ireland and its EU partners have made it clear in the past to Iraqi authorities that we are opposed to courts applying the death sentence." : Prime Minister Romano Prodi said "While not wishing to play down the crimes... I cannot but express the firm opposition