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About 300 people waited as the coffin was moved inside Sheikh al-Nida’s house. An announcement was made that the body would be buried at 9am on Sunday. But early in the morning, a US military convoy arrived and told Sheikh al-Nida to bury the corpse before dawn, said Hazaa, who stayed the night at the sheikh’s house.

At 3am, the tribe took Saddam’s body to the al-Auja grand mosque. There about 11 people threw themselves on Saddam’s body. His cheeks were bruised and there was blood on his back. The mourners recited a prayer and then led him outside to be buried in his tomb. The ceremony lasted less than an hour.

His sons, Uday and Qusay, who were killed by US troops in 2003, lie in the family plot in the al-Awja cemetry.

In the morning sheikhs came expecting to view Saddam’s body, only to find that they were too late. Some people yelled, while women cried over his Iraqi-flag draped tomb. A BMW turned up with four hooded and armed men, who said a prayer and left after a few minutes.

Another cousin of Saddam’s, named Muhammad Ahmed Saddam, started firing in the air and shouted, “We will take the revenge for you” before fainting. When he came round he again started sobbing and promised once more to seek retribution.

A female cousin, named Widad, denounced Iraq’s national government. “I wonder how many women had been raped and murdered by the hands of this Government.

“Did that happen before to Shia women during Saddam’s time? Who will punish this Government and who will execute them?” State television showed Sheikh al-Nida and the governor of Salahaddin, signing a letter agreeing to take the body from the Iraqi Government and bury it immediately in Auja.

It then showed them checking the shrouded body and closing the coffin before it was loaded on to the back of a pick-up truck and driven to a waiting helicopter.

The governor said that the body had been ritually bathed and dressed according to Muslim tradition, and that the funeral was attended by a small number of officials and relatives. Symbolic funerals were also held in other Sunni towns and cities in Iraq.

Yesterday Saddam’s extended family said that they planned to found a presidential library and religious school at his burial site. “We want to turn the place into a religious school and a library to honour Saddam,” said Muayed alHazaa, a relative who described himself as a cousin of Saddam.

In life, the 69-year-old Saddam was noted as a voracious reader, a habit he continued during his three years in a US military prison, where he also wrote poetry and stories.

One biographer recorded that among his favourite reading were the works and life of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

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