BAGHDAD (AFP) -- Iraq's ousted leader Saddam Hussein, being tried on charges of crimes against humanity, spent his third birthday in a row behind bars as he turned 69.

His birthday attracted little of the frenzy the date once engendered when it was celebrated as a national holiday during his 24 years of strong-armed rule from 1979 to 2003.

U.S. officials were tight-lipped about what Saddam was up to on his birthday.

"We don't have much interest in providing any color to Saddam's life," a U.S. military spokesman told AFP.

Even in his hometown of Tikrit, Saddam's birthday passed unnoticed, although a few dozen posters bearing his portrait were seen in the majority Sunni city of Samarra, north of Baghdad.

Samarra, the site of a February bomb blast that damaged a revered Shiite shrine sparking a wave of sectarian violence that has raged ever since, still shows modest support for the ousted Sunni president.

Although it is generally accepted that Saddam killed tens of thousands of his own citizens, some residents expressed their nostalgia for his brutal, but more stable rule.

"The occupiers and their agents among the new leaders are responsible for more massacres in this country than Saddam Hussein," said an elderly Samarra resident, who asked not to be named.

"He is better than the politicians of today, who have brought the country neither safety nor stability," added a merchant, who also requested anonymity.

Saddam is being tried by an Iraqi tribunal on charges including murder and torture over the killing of Shiites following an attempt on his life in the village of Dujail in 1982. But U.S. forces oversee his detention at the request of the Iraqi authorities "for security reasons," the US spokesman said. "He is treated humanely and in full accordance with international standards."

Saddam first went on trial in October last year and was last seen on television on April 22 in the courtroom for the latest hearing along with seven former regime officials also charged over Dujail.

The trial is set to resume on May 15 wit the defense expected to produce its first witnesses and Saddam will also soon face charges of genocide for the Anfal campaign of the late 1980s in at least 100,000 were killed, mostly Kurds.

Saddam was found hiding in a hole in December 2003 after the US-led invasion in March of that year.