The former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein will be hanged by the end of January, a senior member of Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawa party predicted today as an around-the-clock curfew kept the lid on sectarian violence after the deposed dictator was sentenced to death.

"I don’t think it will drag on beyond January of next year," said MP Haider al-Abadi, who is a confidant to the Iraqi Prime Minister.

The 69-year-old strongman was sentenced to death yesterday for ordering a brutal crackdown that claimed the lives of 148 Shia from the village of Dujail, north of Baghdad, after a 1982 assassination attempt on his life.

Iraq’s high tribunal also handed the death penalty to Saddam’s half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti, as well as Awad Ahmed al-Bandar, the head of the ousted regime’s Revolutionary Court, the man who recommended that the 148 Dujailis be executed.

Saddam's former vice-president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, received a life sentence, while three Baath party officials from Dujail received up to 15 years and a fourth, more junior, figure was cleared.

Iraqi law includes an automatic appeal for death and life sentences. A nine-judge appellate chamber will start to review Saddam’s case within 30 days.

The high tribunal will forward its judicial ruling to the appellate chamber in the next ten days. Once the document is delivered, the prosecution and defence have 20 days to submit their arguments to the appeals judges.

When this month-long period ends, the appellate chamber will study the case, but it has no deadline for issuing a decision. If the judges decide to uphold the verdict, Saddam, al-Tikriti and al-Bandar will be hanged within 30 days.

Abadi was confident that the chamber would complete its judicial review within a month of receiving all the legal arguments.

"The chamber can take as long as it wants, but it should not delay," he told The Times.

"Everyone is eager to have Saddam executed… It is important that we make these people supporting him feel there is no hope (that he will come back) so the killings and the bombings stop."

Abadi guessed that the defence would wait until early December to submit their legal arguments to the chamber in order to delay Saddam’s hanging. But Mr Abadi was confident that the appeals judges would then breeze through their review.

Saddam’s execution will probably take place in a closed room inside an Iraqi prison, most likely in Baghdad in the presence of Iraqi government officials and private citizens, whose families suffered under the dictator’s reign, a government official told The Times on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

Some journalists and non-governmental organisations would also attend, the source added.

Meanwhile a curfew that was slapped on Baghdad on Saturday night to stave off reprisals by Saddam loyalists after the verdict was due to be lifted at 6 am on Tuesday, said Basam Ridha, an official advisor to Mr al-Maliki.

Despite the curfew, a Sunni mosque was burnt down yesterday Shia militants in southwestern Baghdad, Iraq’s Islamic Party said on its website. North of Baghdad, a US Army helicopter crashed, killing two soldiers in Saddam’s home province of Salahaddin Monday, but the military said there was no evidence that the aircraft had come under fire.

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