Saddam Ejected From Court Again, Defense Team Boycotts Session

Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been ejected from a Baghdad courtroom for the second time in a week after raising objections to his trial on genocide charges.

The presiding judge threw Saddam out of court today after the former leader complained that he no longer wanted to be in a cage. Saddam was referring to a metal enclosure where defendants sit.

Saddam and his six co-defendants are charged with carrying out a campaign of genocide against Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s.

Before Saddam was ejected, the court heard testimony from an elderly Iraqi Kurdish man, who said he witnessed Iraqi warplanes bombing a village in the north of the country, in an apparent gas attack.

The man says he smelled a strange odor as he approached the village, and felt short of breath. He said Iraqi forces later sent him and his family to a prison, where he watched guards beat a man to death.