The trial of the ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and six codefendants on genocide charges against Kurd minority in the 1980s resumed Wednesday, which saw a defense lawyer ejected and ordered to be arrested soon afterwards.

Chief Judge Muhammad Ureibi ordered the defense lawyer Badie Aref, always a vocal presence in the trial, be ejected and arrested for a day for "insulting the court."

Aref is defending Farhan al-Jubouri, the former head of military intelligence during Operation Anfal in 1980s.

He was trying to tell the court that one American forensic scientist, summoned by the court as an expert, should attend the court immediately and not to see any other party before his presence, but Judge Ureibi was angered by the manner and way Aref put his statement.

Wednesday's session is a continuation of Saddam trial over Anfal case which the prosecution says that about 180,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the 1987-88 crackdown.

If convicted, Saddam could get his second death penalty following the first one he got from the trial of Dujail.

On Tuesday's session, Clyde Colin Snow, 78, the American forensic expert from the University of Oklahoma took the stand in the Saddam trial to testify on his investigation in 1992 of the mass grave of Koreme village in Iraq's northern province of Dohuk.

Snow said in his investigation, organized by the group of Physicians for Human Rights and Middle East Rights Watch, he had unearthed 27 people from the mass grave in Koreme village, which he described as typical of thousands of other villages targeted in Anfal.

Saddam had insisted that Snow should not be allowed to testify because he was American and demanded neutral international experts, suggesting that the bodies in the grave may have been moved to the location from separate locations.

Source: Xinhua