Defendants in Hussein’s Trial Removed After Scuffle

The genocide trial of Saddam Hussein erupted in shouting and scuffling Tuesday morning, and all seven defendants had been cleared from the courtroom when testimony into alleged prison brutalities continued in the afternoon.

Chief Judge Mohammed Orabi Khalefa cut the microphone when the former president began his cross-examination of the first witness with an apparent quotation from the Koran, “Fight them and God will torture them.”

Khalefa and Hussein then began arguing so loudly that their voices could be heard through thick glass. The former leader complained that the judge made him stand while witnesses were allowed to sit.

Khalefa ordered the guards to eject him. Hussein went quietly, but codefendant Hussein Rashid Mohammed jumped from his chair and yelled, “Long live Iraq!” Mohammed flailed his arms as two guards tried to force him to sit. Reporters were cleared from the court, and when they reached the media room, they could see on monitors that Mohammed was no longer in the courtroom.

Later, Hussein’s cousin and codefendant Ali Hassan Majid, known as Chemical Ali, was heard to say: “I hope to get executed. It’s better than this mockery.” At that point, the court went into closed session.

The broadcast resumed in the afternoon with all the defendants absent.

Hussein and his codefendants are on trial for a crackdown on Kurdish rebels in the late 1980s that killed as many as 100,000 people.

The defense team again boycotted the trial Tuesday to protest the replacement last month of the original judge, who was accused by critics of being soft on the defense.

Tuesday’s testimony brought graphic accounts of abuse of Kurdish prisoners.

One witness said she saw a baby delivered in a bathroom and its umbilical cord cut by a shard of glass. Another said she saw 1,000 children die of hunger and illness. Others said women were taken away at night and raped.