Saddam: court outburst

THE chief judge threw Saddam Hussein and his six co-defendants out of court yesterday after the ex-president shouted during his trial in Baghdad on charges of genocide against the Kurds.

Trouble started when Saddam attempted to speak.

The judge, Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, cut off the microphone. He then pointed to court bailiffs to escort the ex-president from the courtroom.

Saddam interrupted yesterday’s court proceedings by shouting a verse from the Koran.

“Fight them and God will punish them,” he yelled in what appeared to be a call for members of his disbanded Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party to continue fighting US forces in Iraq.

Before the closure, the judge told Saddam’s six co-defendants that he had been patient with them, but they were obstructing the trial.

“I allowed you to say what you want, but you’ve been making problems,” he said.

Saddam and his cousin “Chemical” Ali Hassan al-Majid face charges of genocide in the trial. The other five face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity during a crackdown on Iraq’s Kurdish population in the late 1980s in which about 180,000 people were killed.