BAGHDAD, Iraq: Iraqis celebrated the death sentence handed down to deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam by gathering on the streets, dancing, waving flags and setting fire to his pictures.

Saddam, his half brother and another senior official in his regime were convicted and sentenced Sunday to hang for crimes against humanity in the 1982 killings of 148 people in the city of Dujail.

The trial brought Saddam and his co-defendants before their accusers in what was one of the most highly publicized and heavily reported trials of its kind since the Nuremberg tribunals for members of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime and its slaughter of 6 million Jews in the World War II Holocaust

During Sunday's hearing, Saddam initially refused the chief judge Raouf Abdul-Rahman Rashid's order to rise; two bailiffs pulled the ousted ruler to his feet and he remained standing through the sentencing, sometimes wagging his finger at the judge.

Before the session began, one of Saddam's lawyers, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, was ejected from the courtroom after handing the judge a memorandum in which he called the trial a travesty.

Chief Judge Raouf Rashid pointed to Clark and said in English, "Get out."

The White House has welcomed the verdict against Saddam saying "You now have absolute proof that you've got an independent judiciary in Iraq".