BAGHDAD, Iraq: A female attorney representing former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in his crimes against humanity trial has been thrown out of the courtroom only minutes after she had been readmitted after an ejection in April.
Bushra Khalil was physically removed from the Iraqi Special Tribunal on Monday after ignoring chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman's admonition to remain silent.
In April, Khalil was thrown out of the courtroom after she showed pictures of Iraqi prisoners being abused by U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib prison and said to Hussein, "Look what they are doing to your country."
On Monday, the judge told her she would need to behave properly this time and remain silent. Khalil refused and removed her robe, throwing it in the direction of the judge.
She was taken out of the courtroom by two guards.
When Hussein stood up and tried to defend her, Abdel-Rahman told him to sit back down.
"You will remain silent, you are a defendant," the judge said.
"I am Saddam Hussein and nothing is going to change that," the former president said.
Hussein and seven co-defendants are charged in connection with the detention, torture and killing of dozens of Shiites in Dujail, a town north of Baghdad, after a failed assassination attempt against the ex-Iraqi leader in 1982.
Nearly 150 Shiites, some of them teenagers, were executed and hundreds more were jailed in the crackdown.
The first defense witness in Monday's session testified on behalf of Awad Bandar, the former chief judge of the revolutionary court.
The witness, a court employee, tried to establish the validity of the Dujail proceedings that eventually led to more than 140 executions.
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