CAIRO, Egypt - To some, he is a wrongly accused Arab hero. To others, he is the embodiment of evil at last facing justice. As Saddam stood in the dock accused of murder and torture, one thing was clear: The former Iraqi leader can still rile emotions and cause division in this region forever changed by his 23 years of brutal rule.

Anyone in the Mideast within range of a television or a newspaper found the trial's opening day hard to ignore Wednesday. The big satellite channels, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, broadcast the hearing from start to stop. The pan-Arab daily al-Hayat splashed it on its front page: "The trial of the 21st century."

Those with a personal history were especially engrossed, particularly Iraqi exiles in neighboring Jordan and also Kuwaitis, who knew Saddam's iron fist through his seven months of occupation before the first Gulf War.

Their voices rang out in vengeance.

"Saddam killed my uncle and my cousins. ... God willing, he will be executed," said one, Mohamed Aziz, a 23-year-old Iraqi Shiite from Nasiriyah, now living in Jordan.

Another, Wadha al-Abduljader, a 48-year-old homemaker in Kuwait, said: "I hope before they execute him, they bring him to Kuwait, put him in a cage and drive him around so that we can hit him with shoes." That is the ultimate Arab insult.

But opinions cut the other way, too.

One former Iraqi soldier who went to Jordan two years ago looking for work, Mohammed Ali Kadhem, called the trial illegitimate and futile. "Saddam Hussein is not a criminal. He is a hero. I hope he will be acquitted and return to power," he said.

Khaled Abdul-Khader, a 40-year-old taxi driver in Amman, the Jordanian capital, also called Saddam a great hero. "He's the only one who hit Israel. He's the only one who said 'No' to America."

In Israel, where Saddam fired 39 Scud missiles during the first Gulf War, the trial was viewed with obvious satisfaction and a look forward to what might happen to other Arab dictators.

"I'm sure it will provide food for thought in Damascus. ... I'm sure (Syrian President Bashar) Assad is watching in trepidation," said one Israeli, Yuval Steinitz, the chairman of the Israeli parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee.

But elsewhere, Palestinians, whose uprising against Israel had Saddam's full support, mourned the Iraqi leader as a fallen savior.

"He supported the martyrs' (suicide bombers') families and he helped many students in Palestine," said one, Wael Naser, a 42-year-old Gaza vegetable-shop owner.

Another, 32-year-old Palestinian taxi driver Saed Souror, was more ambivalent about Saddam but still strongly against his trial.

"I am not a Saddam supporter," Souror said. "But I am against this trial because it came upon American orders. If Saddam was a murderer, what can we call the American acts there?"