Life had come to a virtual halt in Baghdad after the round-the-clock curfew was imposed to thwart any attack during the verdict against Saddam Hussein.
The ban on pedestrian movement was lifted late on Monday afternoon, while the vehicle ban would be lifted from 6am today. However, the daily dusk-to-dawn curfew in the capital from 9pm will remain in effect.
Saddam was sentenced on Sunday to hang for committing crimes against humanity by ordering the deaths of 148 Shi'ites from the village of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt against him.
His half-brother and intelligence chief Barzan al-Tikriti was also sentenced to death, as was Awad Ahmed al-Bandar, who was chairman of the Revolutionary Court that ordered the Shi'ites executed.
Saddam's former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan received a life sentence, while three Baath party officials from Dujail received 15 years each and a fourth was cleared.
Appeal underway
Under Iraqi law, Saddam, Barzan, Bandar and Ramadan have an automatic right to appeal against their sentences and the process began on Monday.
A US official close to the court said that the defendants can file their appeals over the next 30 days. He said that on receipt of the file, the appeal chamber has to immediately forward it to the prosecutor's chamber.
"The prosecutor gets 20 days to present his views on the file after which he gives the file back to the appeal chamber which then starts deliberating on it," the US official said.
"There is no set period for the appeal chamber's deliberations but after the appeal chamber's decision is final, and if it upholds the trial chamber's rulings, the sentence has to be carried out in 30 days."
Saddam's lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi said his team was determined to appeal the "political" verdict issued by the Iraqi court, although it believes nothing will be gained.
"My experience with this court shows that there is no benefit to gain from appealing because this court is political, nevertheless we will appeal," Mr Dulaimi told AFP.
"The court refused to look at the arguments which we submitted yesterday and this shows that it is 100-percent political," Mr Dulaimi said.
Chief prosecutor of the tribunal Jaafar al-Musawi said the appeal chamber's decision could be expected in January or February.
"Considering that the appeal period ends on December 5, I expect the chamber's decision to come in one or two months," he said.
The US official further explained that if the appeal chamber upholds a death sentence, it goes to the three-member presidency council for its approval.
Sentence 'pre-approved'
The Associated Press reported that Iraq's three-man presidential council agreed at least six months ago not to block the death penalty for Saddam, should it be upheld on appeal.
All three members of the Presidential Council - President Jalal Talabani and Vice Presidents Tariq al-Hashimi and Adil Abdul-Mahdi - must sign death warrants before executions can be carried out.
Mr Talabani, a Kurd who opposes capital punishment, has permanently deputised Abdul-Mahdi, a Shi'ite Muslim, to sign on his behalf. Mr Abdul-Mahdi has said he would sign Saddam's death warrant, meaning two of three signatures were assured.
Mr Al-Hashimi, the other vice president and a Sunni Muslim, gave his word that he also would sign a Saddam death penalty sentence as part of the deal under which he got the job on April 22, according to witnesses at the meeting, which was attended by US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.
"We wanted a written promise before the first meeting of the new parliament but later and during a meeting in the presence of American and British ambassadors and other politicians the promise became oral in which he vowed not oppose important rules and laws especially those related to Saddam," Deputy Parliament Speaker Khaled al-Attiyah told AP.
Thus the approval of the death penalties handed down for Saddam, his half brother, Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, chief of the Revolutionary Court, had been part of the pact under which Mr al-Hashimi got one of two vice presidential posts.
The Saddam and the other two men sentenced to hang were among eight defendants in a trial for the 1980s killings of nearly 150 Shi'ite Muslims from the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, after a failed assassination attempt on Saddam in the city in 1982.
Thus, if the nine-judge appeals panel upholds the death sentences, they could be ready for signing shortly after the first of the year, according to a schedule laid out by chief prosecutor Jaafar Moussawi.
According to him, the Iraqi High Tribunal, which issued the verdicts, must send the entire case file to the appeals panel within 10 days, or by November 15.
The Saddam defence team must submit it's appeal to the tribunal by December 5.
On the same day that the defence appeal is given to the High Tribunal, that court is required to send it to the prosecutor general for study and preparation of counter-arguments.
There is no time limit for the prosecutor to answer the appeal, but Mr Moussawi said he would submit his brief within days of receiving the defence appeal.
And while the appellate court also has no deadline for its ruling, Moussawi said it would act quickly because it had no other cases under consideration.
"The appeals panel will take less than a month to make its decision," Moussawi said.