As Genocide Trial Begins, Hussein Is Again Defiant

The Anfal tribunal opened in the former headquarters of Hussein's Baath Party, in the Green Zone. The former president, in a black suit and white shirt with an open collar, was the first defendant to enter the room. Like all of the defendants, he sat in a wooden cage divided into three rows.

The last defendant to enter was Majeed, commander of northern Iraq during the time of the Anfal campaign, whose frail appearance belied his fearsome reputation. A stooped man with plum-sized bags under his eyes, he shuffled in slowly with the aid of a cane.

Hussein had far fewer outbursts Monday than in his first trial, when he hurled insults at the judges. At one point on Monday, he showed out-of-character deference after he attempted to interrupt the chief judge.

"Please don't interrupt," snapped the judge, Abdullah al-Amiri.

"Sorry, I thought you had finished," said Hussein, who then kept quiet.

But Hussein also exhibited his unruly side at times, especially at the beginning of the session. When asked to state his name, he refused.

"You know my name," Hussein retorted. "My name is well known to you."

"I must ask you your name," said Amiri, noting that the law required him to do so. He waved a book of regulations in the air. "Do you respect this law?"

Hussein sat stone-faced for a few moments before replying: "This is the law of the occupation." Eventually he stated his name and declared himself "president of the Republic of Iraq and commander in chief of the heroic Iraqi armed forces."

He became visibly angry only later in the session, when he vehemently denied that widespread rapes had taken place during Anfal. "How could it be that an Iraqi Kurdish woman was raped while Saddam Hussein was in power?" he said.

Legal experts and U.S. officials expect Amiri, a 54-year-old Shiite with 25 years of experience as a judge, to exert greater discipline on the courtroom than in the first trial, which was widely seen as chaotic. "It was a mess," said Scharf, the law professor.

The judge was also unyielding in his enforcement of a law that prevents non-Iraqi lawyers from speaking in the court, even though it was allowed in the Dujail case. Two defense attorneys walked out of the court room in protest.

The chief prosecutor, Mousawi, said in an interview after court that the judge "had two characteristics: total calmness and strength. He was in total control for the entire session, over the lawyers and the witnesses."

Elsewhere in Iraq, the U.S. military announced the deaths of two Marines and a sailor during fighting Sunday in Anbar province, a western redoubt of the Sunni insurgency. The U.S. military also announced the death of a service member Monday in Baghdad when his vehicle was struck by a bomb. No details were available.

Interior Ministry officials said 20 people were killed Monday in incidents in and around Baghdad. And the casualty toll from attacks by Sunni insurgents on Shiite pilgrims marching Sunday in Baghdad increased to 25 dead and nearly 400 wounded, according to a Health Ministry spokesman.

At a meeting with reporters in Baghdad, a top U.S. military official said U.S.-led forces would turn over command of an entire Iraqi army division for the first time on Sept. 3. U.S. troops, though, will continue to handle logistics for the division, the Kut-based 8th, said the official, Brig. Gen. Dan Pittard, commander of the Iraqi Assistance Group, which advises Iraqi security forces.

Correspondents Ellen Knickmeyer and Sudarsan Raghavan in Baghdad, special correspondents Saad al-Izzi and Naseer Nouri in Baghdad and Saad Sarhan in Najaf, and other Washington Post staff contributed to this report.