Saddam Hussein was ejected from his genocide trial for a third day on Tuesday and his co-defendants tried to storm out after him, as chaos reined following the sacking of the chief judge last week.
Judge Mohammed al-Ureybi had opened the hearing with a lecture to Saddam not to disrupt the proceedings, and allowed him to read a 20-minute written statement, with microphones off so those in the glass-enclosed press gallery could not hear.
But after listening to two Kurdish witnesses, Saddam again began to argue and the judge lost his patience.
”You are a defendant and I’m a judge,” Ureybi said. ”Shut up, no one talk … The court has decided to eject Saddam Hussein from court.”
As Saddam left smiling, his six co-defendants — top officials under Saddam — stood and tried to follow him out, demanding they leave too. The judge shouted back: ”Get Saddam out and put the others back in their seats.”
Several co-defendants started shouting and pointing fingers at the judge. Ureybi ejected one, former defence minister Sultan Hashim, before ordering a recess.
Unusually, the sound was left on for television broadcasts, allowing all Iraqis to watch and listen as pandemonium broke out in the courtroom for several minutes.
Previous judge fired
Saddam was also expelled from the courtroom during the last two hearings for protesting against the sacking of Ureybi’s predecessor as chief judge, Abdullah al-Amiri. The government fired al-Amiri last week for saying Saddam was ”not a dictator”.
Saddam and the other six could face hanging over the deaths of an estimated 180 000 Kurdish villagers in 1988, including thousands killed by poison gas.
He and his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid — dubbed ”Chemical Ali” by Iraqis — face genocide charges. Five others face charges of mass murder and crimes against humanity.
International legal rights groups have said the sacking of the judge could hurt the legitimacy of the outcome of the trial. But prosecutors said al-Amiri had been too lenient, allowing Saddam to threaten witnesses. He once told accusers in court he would ”crush their heads”.
The trial has featured moving testimony from villagers recounting their suffering during the Anfal — ”Spoils of War” — campaign, when Saddam’s forces attacked Kurds accused of helping Iran during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
Before Saddam was ejected on Tuesday, the court heard from Aasi Mustafa Ahmed, a villager in his 50s who said he had been an Iraqi army conscript and prisoner of war in Iran. When he returned home in 1990 he found his house destroyed and his wife and four children missing, never to be seen again.
Asked if he sought compensation, he said: ”If you gave me the whole world, it wouldn’t make up for one of my children’s fingernails.”
All the defence lawyers walked out last week after al-Amiri was sacked as chief judge and have not returned, but court-appointed lawyers are in place. — Reuters