BAGHDAD, Dec 7: A defiant Saddam Hussein refused to attend his trial on Wednesday, forcing the court to convene without the former Iraqi president as it heard graphic witness testimony and adjourned for the next two weeks. After telling the judge a day earlier to ‘go to hell!’ and complaining about the conditions of detention, Saddam’s shock move forced hours of delay and confusion before the session could resume in his absence.

It was a new setback for the tribunal, which has been criticized for a slow start held up by numerous adjournments and procedural wrangling.

Presiding judge Rizkar Mohammed Amin announced its latest adjournment until Dec 21 ahead of general elections next week, already the third substantial pause since proceedings opened on Oct 19.

With Saddam Hussein not in attendance, the court heard allegations of torture, electric shocks and starvation related to a massacre of Shia villagers in the early 1980s after two days of already harrowing testimony.

Defence lawyers have challenged witness testimony as confused, fabricated and not directly implicating their clients amid furious outbursts from the dock attesting to maltreatment in detention and their innocence.

Speaking with his voice electronically distorted and obscured behind a drape, witness ‘F’ narrated horrific memories from 70 days in Baghdad’s intelligence headquarters and at Abu Ghraib for over a year-and-a-half.

He said prisoners were tortured every day in the notorious Iraqi prison, detailing an ordeal of sleep deprivation, diarrhoea, handcuffed and forced to stand for days with scarce food and only hot drinking water.

“In prison I saw someone killed in front of me, he was killed in torture,” said the witness under cross-examination one of Saddam’s lawyers.

Another horrifying experience was periodic ‘treatment’ in the infirmary. “If you had a toothache he would punch your tooth until it bleeds. Everyone who went down for treatment knew they would be beaten,” the witness said.—AFP