Only one story dominates the front pages of the papers on this New Years eve and that is the executio of Saddam Hussein former leader of Iraq which took place yesterday morning.

The Independent has a picture of the body of the former dictator wrapped in a white shroud with the headline

THE DEAD DICTATOR

As they put the rope around his neck, the 69-year-old former dictator muttered to himself, "Do not be afraid." It was still dark outside. The sun had not yet risen. The call to prayer had not yet sounded in the city that Saddam Hussein al-Majid al-Tikriti once ruled through fear.
Now he stood shackled in a prison in a northern suburb of Baghdad ­ the same prison in which his own secret service, al-Mukhabarat, once tortured and killed. The trapdoor at his feet had opened for countless others, on his orders. His own death would be almost as brutal.
The executioner offered Saddam a hood to cover his face during those final moments, but it was refused. "God is great," said the condemned man. "The nation will be victorious. Palestine belongs to the Arabs."
Those were his last words. A lever was pulled, the trapdoor swung and his body dropped, half a metre, no more. It was enough, according to a witness: " We heard his neck snap instantly."

Many of the other papers show scenes from the final momements of his life as he is stood on the gallows with a noose around his neck.The Observer headlines

Frame by frame: last moments of a tyrant

But reminding everyone that

Saddam Hussein's execution, however, brought no early end to the country's spiral of violence. Within hours, a series of car bombs killed dozens of people in Baghdad and south of the capital.

The Telegraph reports

Saddam's end: tormented as his death loomed

Saddam rejected an offer of dinner, a cooked chicken, and asked only for a copy of the Koran. By 1am, all he wanted to do was sleep.
But his guards, all members of the dominant Shia Sciri party, had other ideas. One in particular, nicknamed Ali the Butcher, intended to make a hell of Saddam's last night on earth. "They were making jokes about Saddam," another guard who spoke to those on duty told The Sunday Telegraph. "Ali the Butcher had the rope they would hang him with, and he was telling Saddam 'It's waiting for you, it's waiting for you'.

The Mirror carries the headline

SADDAMNED

BEAST OF BAGHDAD GOES TO THE GALLOWS

There is of cause much reporting on both the reaction and reflection on the events.
The Indy asks

How Washington and London helped to create the monster they went to war to destroy

When they hanged him, he was America's vanquished foe, likened to Hitler and Stalin for the murderous evil of his ways. What is forgotten is that once, for more than a decade, Saddam Hussein was staunchly supported by the US.
Indeed, it was Washington that supplied him with many of the weapons of mass destruction the dictator used against his foes - weapons that one day would serve as a pretext for the US-led invasion that toppled him.

Whilst in the same paper Robert Fisk writes

He takes his secrets to the grave. Our complicity dies with him

The Telegraph asks

How did he last so long?

it says much for Saddam's brutish sense of self-preservation that despite Iraq's crushing defeat in the first Gulf war of 1991, it took the US, supported by Britain and other allies, a further 12 years to topple him. As one exasperated Iraqi exile said: "Saddam is a dictator who is ready to sacrifice his country, just so long as he can remain on his throne in Baghdad."

The Observer reports on

Family clues to Iraq's missing oil billions

American and Iraqi government investigators tracing hundreds of millions of pounds missing from Saddam Hussein's illicit fortune are hoping to question members of the former dictator's close family.
Officials from the FBI, the American Treasury and the State Department particularly want to find £2.2bn in illegal profits that Saddam's regime is alleged to have earned from 2000-2003 from an oil-for-trade pact signed with Syria that was outside the official United Nations administered oil-for-food programme, according to official documents released to a US congressional sub-committee.

The Sunday Times reports that

Britons happier, but not with Britain

A poll in the paper suggests that

Although people appear to be satisfied with their personal wellbeing, they seem thoroughly fed up with rudeness, bad language and loutish behaviour, which they claim have contributed to Britain’s decline over the past five years.

The Indy looks forward to a new year

Is this your lucky number? Seventy-seven things you need to know about 07
2007 ends with a number seen as special around the world. To Christians it represents perfection, while Muslims speak of seven heavens. To others it is lucky, magical or powerful (as well as being the spot count on a ladybird). So will the coming year be special too? To help you decide, and prepare, Simon Usborne reveals the secrets of the mystical number
seven

And on a more serious note reminds us that it will be the year that Tony Blair leaves office

2007: Blair's long goodbye

Tony Blair's time as Prime Minister will come to an end in 2007, but it was in 2006 that he was forced - once again and more precisely this time - to pre-announce his departure. The big moment of the British political year came on 7 September in a north London school. The Prime Minister said, on camera, that he "would have preferred to do this in my own way", but his engagement in Manchester later that month would be "my last party conference as party leader".

The Telegraph previews his likely successor

Brown's Downing St 'humbler, more austere'

Gordon Brown will preside over an exodus of Tony Blair's allies from No 10 and usher in "humbler and more austere" government, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

Several senior ministers are expected to bow out with Mr Blair, including John Prescott, his deputy, John Hutton, the Work and Pensions Secretary, Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, Hilary Armstrong, the social exclusion minister, and Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor. All are key supporters of Mr Blair.

The Observer looks at another successor

Working class can trust Tories, says Cameron

In a new year message released today, the Conservative leader vows to offer a 'positive alternative to a Labour government whose incompetence and untrustworthiness are beginning to disgust the working people it was elected to serve'.

Writing in the Sunday Mirror Richard Stott comments

THERE is a grim irony about Tony Blair spending his last New Year as Prime Minister at the home of a Bee Gee. At least the brothers managed to stay together and more or less in tune even if the noise they produced was a little highpitched and strange.
For the Prime Minister there has been no such luck. Gordon Brown, his once-upon-a-time political blood brother, finally squeezed a date of departure from the man he reckoned with increasing bitterness had stolen his birthright. Their mood music has been out of tune for years, but somehow they managed to stay more or less on song until Gordon succumbed to Saturday Night Fever and tried an all-too-public coup.

On the same topic the Mail informs us

Miami Vice New Year for Tony and Cherie

The Blairs are expected to attend an exotic New Year's Eve costume party thrown by Robin and Dwina Gibb tonight.
The Bee Gee and his wife, a bisexual part-time Druid priestess, have a reputation for throwing the most extravagant - and flamboyant - parties in Miami, while their guests often include drag queens, lesbians and sexual voyeurs.

The News of the World has a picture of a grinning Pm in a pair of Bermuda shorts

NO wonder Tony Blair's grinning as he shows off his man-boobs — we can reveal he's enjoying £10,000 of holiday freebies.

The Sunday Times reports on

Hunt on in Britain for more Rwanda genocide suspects

THE hunt for more Rwandan war crime suspects sheltering in Britain will continue in the wake of last week’s dramatic arrest of four Rwandans accused of playing leading roles in the genocide.
They face extradition to Rwanda after being held in co-ordinated police swoops on their homes in London, Bedford, Essex and Manchester. The arrests came after years of investigation by The Sunday Times into how Rwandan genocide suspects have slipped into Britain and quietly built new lives.

One of the running stories of the year continues in the Mirror which today tells us

HEATHER Mills is demanding FOUR of Sir Paul McCartney's homes in an amazing divorce shopping list.
She has told her lawyers she wants the properties - in London, Sussex, Los Angeles and New York.
And her list also details her plans for a jetset life with their three-year-old daughter Beatrice - and includes cars, clothes, holidays, bodyguards, a private jet and helicopter rides.
Heather, 38, also wants an annual allowance - because she claims the high-profile marriage and split wrecked her career

And a story that will probably run thru next year is featured in the Mail

Stay away, Home Office begs Romanian workers

The Home Office has spent nearly £300,000 on a desperate last-minute advertising campaign to dissuade thousands of Romanian and Bulgarian workers from coming to Britain.