The trial of the ousted leader Saddam Hussein and six codefendants on charges of genocide against Iraq's Kurdish minority in 1980s resumed Wednesday with Saddam's attendance in the courtroom.

The trial resume came after Saddam's defense team released on Tuesday a letter by him, in which the deposed president said he could no longer put up with "continued insults" by the chief judge and prosecutors, adding his lawyers and him have not had a chance to respond to the allegations submitted by the witnesses and the prosecutors.

On the 28th session of the Anfal trial, Saddam and six codefendants attended the courtroom, while the chief judge Muhammad Ureibi called the first prosecution witness to take the stand.

On Sunday, lawyers for Saddam Hussein have formally submitted an appeal against the death sentence on their client for crimes against humanity in the separate trial of Dujail, in which 148 people were accused of being killed in the aftermath of crackdown on the town after a failed assassination attempt on the ousted leader in 1982.

On Nov. 5, panel of five Iraqi judges sentenced Saddam, his half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and Iraq's former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar to death by hanging for the killings in the town of Dujail, some 60 km north of Baghdad.

Saddam and six of his aides are facing charges of genocide against Kurds in the trial of Operation Anfal (Spoils of War), in which prosecutors said that up to 180,000 Kurds were killed, many of them by poison gas and mass killings.

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

Source: Xinhua