Hillu, sitting behind a counter piled high with a television, plastic flowers and cell-phone cards, said: "He didn't represent anything for me. He was just a death grip imposed on our neck."

Even though their oppressor had been hanged, Shiites in northeastern Baghdad were giving no parties. Blocks had none of their usual bustle. Even the office of the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was closed.

The response was markedly different from the reaction after the November verdict and sentencing of Saddam to die, when Silly String and sweets were plied in equal measure.

For some Iraqis, previous humiliations were enough to feel justice had been done. Smeisam, a teacher in the largely Shiite area of Binouk, said her mother, whose parents had been murdered by the regime, said the moment of revenge came sweetly for her when she saw the footage of American soldiers pulling Saddam out of the spider hole near Tikrit in December 2003.

Her husband, Mukaram, was completely unsentimental.

"Truly I feel nothing," he said. "He executed so many people. Now it is his turn. For me he died when he was arrested, so he was not important at all."

Saddam's execution took place early on a day that for Sunni Arabs was the beginning of the Eid-ul-Adha holiday. (Shiites will begin celebrating on Sunday.) Hillu said the death "adds some more taste."

If Shiites saw the hanging as a gift, most Sunnis were revolted that, in what appeared to be a violation of Iraqi law, the execution was scheduled on a holiday of forgiveness.

"Actually, I felt angry," Abdul Aziz said. "It's not a proper time. I assure you, those who are feeling that this is a good time and a good judgment, they are not Iraqis."

Others, namely Kurds, opposed the quick hanging. Now Saddam will not testify in other important genocide cases, especially the trial over the Anfal military campaign against the Kurds, in which he is accused of unleashing mass killings and chemical attacks that killed tens of thousands of villagers.

"The truth of what happened in al-Anfal has been buried," said Abu Abdul Rahman, a 38-year-old Kurdish taxi driver. "What happened in al-Anfal? Who took part in it?"

Others were less bothered by the speed of his execution.

"I think it's too strong to say that I'm cheated," said Bakhtiyar Amin, a Kurd who is a former Iraqi minister of human rights. "He deserves what he got."