Saddam Judge: No More Defense Witnesses

Saddam Hussein testifies during his trial in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, June 13, 2006. Saddam and seven co-defendants are on trial for torture, illegal arrests and the killing of nearly 150 people from Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt on Saddam in the town. (AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg, Pool) (Jacob Silberberg - AP)

They said Saddam ordered his guards to stop firing back when gunmen in a nearby palm grove shot at his car. "My understanding at that time the president did not want ... even an animal in the groves to be hurt by the bodyguards' fire," one witness said.

Another said some Dujail residents approached Saddam after the attack "and they were crying to apologize. I remember, he told them, 'They (the attackers) don't represent you, you are good people.'"

Abdel-Rahman angrily closed the court to the public for several hours after accusing a defense lawyer of trying to prompt a witness _ Saddam's half brother and former adviser Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan _ to make political speeches. Later, he allowed journalists back into the chamber and resumed a video broadcast of the session.

Tensions have grown in the court after the tough-talking Abdel-Rahman effectively shut down a defense attempt to discredit the prosecution's case. Last month, three witnesses testified that some of the 148 Shiites were still alive and living in Dujail.

The defense argued that, if the claims were true, the prosecution's portrayal of the crackdown was deeply flawed and that all the documents it presented should be reviewed for accuracy.

Abdel-Rahman, however, had the three witnesses arrested for perjury, along with a fourth witness who claimed that the chief prosecutor tried to bribe him to testify against Saddam.

On Monday, alleged confessions of the four witnesses were read in court, admitting they committed perjury either because they were intimidated by Saddam loyalists or offered rewards by the defense.

The defense team alleged the confessions were forced, and two of the witnesses _ who have since been released and fled abroad _ told The Associated Press they were beaten in detention to make them sign the confessions.

Ibrahim, Saddam's former intelligence chief, was dragged out of the court Monday by guards after he accused Abdel-Rahman of "terrorizing" the defense. When he tried to push off the guards who were grabbing him, they held his left arm and pushed him into a wall as they tried to hustle him out the door, causing an uproar among the defense lawyers.

"This is dictatorial," Ibrahim shouted.

"You know dictatorship," Abdel-Rahman sneered in reply.

An American lawyer on the defense team, Curtis Doebbler, said Tuesday that the confessions cast doubt on the court's fairness, saying they "were taken under coercive pressure from witnesses who have been beaten and arrested, held incommunicado. Reading those into the record indicates bias in any court in the world."

"These type of allegations from the side of the court draw into concern the impartiality of the court," he said.

Doebbler _ a visiting professor at Najah University in the West Bank _ is one of two American lawyers on the defense team, along with former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark.