Saddam Hussein lasted two hours in court today before the judge threw him out of his genocide trial for the second time in as many sessions.
The former Iraqi president's lawyers boycotted proceedings, and eight court-appointed lawyers stood in for the defence team, which stayed away in protest at the sacking last week by the Iraqi government of the previous chief judge.
The new judge had ejected Saddam during the last hearing on Wednesday, when the defence attorneys had also stormed out in anger.
During a noisy exchange today while one of the six other defendants questioned a Kurdish witness, Saddam waved a yellow paper from his seat in the metal pen where the defendants sit. "I don't want to be in this cage any more," he said.
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Presiding judge Mohammed al-Ureybi replied: "I am the presiding judge. I decide on your presence here. Get him out."
The case concerns the Anfal (Spoils of War) offensive by Iraqi forces in the Kurdish north in 1988.
A witness, a Kurdish man in his 70s, said he watched aircraft bomb a nearby village, giving off clouds that smelled of apples and gave him breathing difficulties. He was later imprisoned and last saw his wife and five children in jail.
He testified to seeing guards beat a man to death and said 400 to 500 other Kurds died while he was imprisoned.
Saddam and his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali", face genocide charges for what prosecutors say are the deaths of 180,000 Kurds, some of them by gassing. Five others face lesser charges of murder and crimes against humanity. All seven men could be executed by hanging.
The defence team walked out of the last hearing after the government had sacked judge Abdullah al-Amiri overnight. The government said Mr Amiri was biased because he had said the previous week that Saddam was "not a dictator".
"The court is committing intolerable mistakes - overtly interfering in the trial procedure and removing and replacing judges," Khalil al-Dulaimi, Saddam's chief lawyer, said.