A defiant Saddam Hussein exchanged angry words with the presiding judge as the trial of the former Iraqi leader resumed yesterday after a 40-day break before being adjourned till next Monday.

Saddam, who faces charges including murder and torture that carry the death penalty, showed no sign of toning down the combative stance he adopted at the first hearing in October.

Iraq's former president and his seven co-defendants, who all pleaded not guilty to charges over a 1982 massacre of Shi'ites, also watched video testimony from a witness who gave evidence from his prison hospital before his death.

Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin ordered all handcuffs and shackles removed from the defendants as each entered the court separately.

Saddam, dressed in black trousers and a gray jacket, entered about eight minutes after his name was called, and then engaged in an angry opening skirmish with Amin over his treatment at the high-security Baghdad courthouse.

Saddam complained he had been forced to walk the stairs into the courtroom accompanied by "foreign guards" as the lift was broken and had been put in handcuffs on the way to the court, making it hard for him to carry a copy of the Koran.

He then lambasted the court for apparently confiscating his pen and paper, saying: "How can a defendant defend himself if they take even his papers and pen?"

The Kurdish Amin who, as in the first hearing, appeared unflappable in the face of Saddam's verbal jousts promised the paper and pen would be returned later on.

Saddam did not shy away from an angry tirade against the court's US guards. "Please judge, I don't want you to tell them, order them. You are Iraqi, you have sovereignty, they are in your country, they are foreigners, they are invaders."

The charges relate to the killing of 148 men and youths from the Shi'ite village of Dujail, north of the capital, after the Saddam escaped an assassination attempt there in 1982.

The other defendants include Barzan Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother and a former director of the Mukhabarat intelligence service, and former Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan.

The court was shown testimony from the wheelchair-bound Waddah Ismail al-Sheikh, a former prison warden, who said 400 people were detained in the town by troops who took their orders from Barzan. He died after the interview.

The other evidence viewed by the court included a short video clip from a British news programme showing Saddam in Dujail in 1982.

The defence team for Saddam, including his lead Iraqi lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi and former US Attorney-General Ramsey Clark, were present at the Baghdad courthouse.

The trial was later adjourned until December 5 in order to give one defendant time to get legal representation, the chief judge said.

(China Daily via agencies November 29, 2005)