Ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein returned to the dock with the resumption of his trial on charges of genocide against the Kurds during the so-called Anfal campaign of the late 1980s. Saddam and six co-defendants stand accused of slaughtering 182,000 Kurds by gassing them and bombing their villages in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq in 1987 and 1988.
The trial resumed after a three-week recess as Saddam's chief lawyer, Iraqi Khalil al-Dulaimi, was not present, but lawyers for the other defendants were.
Saddam is charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity over the Anfal campaign.
The genocide trial started on August 21, and the first three days saw Kurdish villagers testify that their villages had been gassed, their fields destroyed and their families exterminated in brutal death camps run by Saddam's forces.
