Perjury Claim

Saddam Hussein's trial erupted into the usual chaos yesterday, as the chief judge Raouf Abdul Rahman threw out former intelligence chief Barzan Hassan, one of the defendants, and the defence/prosecution accused each other of lying.

Court guards had to escort Barzan Hassan out of the courtroom, after he rebuked chief judge Abdul Rahman for warning a defence witness that he could be prosecuted for perjury.

Hassan said:

"I believe we should hear the witness and take what is useful and ignore what is not useful."

Abdul Rahman retorted:

"Every session you have a lecture."

Adding:

"Get him out of the court."

Aside from the fracas, the court heard from a defence witness who alleged that chief prosecutor Jaafar Moussawi had tried to pay him to falsify testimony against Saddam and his co-defendants. Moussawi responded by accusing the defence of coaching the witness.

A tit for tat argument then broke out, as the defence rounded on the prosecution and accused one of their witnesses of committing perjury; they then demanded that the trial be halted, so that an investigation could be conducted.

To add to the theatrical feel of yesterday's proceedings, the defence showed a DVD purporting to show that Ali al-Haidari lied in testimony he gave in December about a crackdown against Shiites after the 1982 assassination attempt on Saddam.

Al-Haidari had testified that he was arrested at the age of 14 after the attack, and was tortured with electrical shocks and beatings.

One of the videos showed footage of his testimony. In it al-Haidari said that there was no shooting attack on Saddam in Dujail on July 8 1982, the shots were celebratory in honour of Saddam's visit.

The DVD then showed al-Haidari in 2004 praising the attack on Saddam as an attempt by "sons of Dujail ... to kill the greatest tyrant in modern history."

The defence noted the contradiction, and asked that he be investigated for perjury.

Defence lawyer Ziyad al-Najdawi concluded:

"Now that it's been proven that the (al-Haidari) has given an untrue testimony, we ask that the trial proceedings be stopped to allow for an investigation into the veracity of the other prosecution testimony."

Moussawi noted that speeches, outside of oath, were irrelevant.

The court has not ruled on the defence's request.

The trial was adjourned until Monday.