By Country / Iraq
Hussein Ejected From Court Again
September 25, 2006
Hussein in court (file photo) (epa)
"I demand that I am not kept in this cage," Hussein said.
It's the second time in a week the judge has ordered Hussein removed from the courtroom.
Minutes earlier, one of Hussein's co-defendants, former Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad, stood up and rejected the attorney the court had just appointed for him.
The court appointed a total of eight attorneys after the team of defense lawyers announced a boycott of the trial, partly in protest at the Iraqi government's sacking of the chief judge last week.
Hussein and his former colleagues face charges including genocide for spearheading a military campaign against the Kurds in the 1980s that prosecutors say left 182,000 dead.
In testimony today, a Kurdish villager told the court that women prisoners were often raped by a prison warden during the campaign.
(Reuters, AP)