Saddam appears in court despite boycott threat

BAGHDAD, Dec 6 (Reuters) Saddam Hussein appeared at his genocide trial today, despite writing to the chief judge to say he would no longer attend court sessions in protest at being repeatedly silenced.

Saddam and six others are on trial for the Anfal -- Spoils of War -- military campaign against ethnic Kurds in northern Iraq in the 1980s in which prosecutors say up to 180,000 people were killed in poison gas attacks and mass executions.

In a letter handed to a defence team lawyer who saw him on Monday, the former Iraqi leader said he had been stopped from ''clarifying the truth'' over his role in Anfal, which the defence argues was a legitimate operation against Kurdish rebels siding with Iraq's enemy, Iran.

Saddam, who has lodged an appeal against a death sentence from a separate case, was furious when the judge refused to give him an opportunity to deny prosecution allegations he swindled 10 billion dollars of state assets.

''So I tell you I cannot take these continued insults from you and others ... and I ask you to relieve me from attending the sessions of this new farce and you can do whatever you want,'' Saddam said in the letter released by his lawyers.

But a smiling Saddam turned up in the courtroom to hear a former doctor at a Kurdish rebel hospital testify how he had treated victims of the poison gas attacks.

Dr Faiq Gulpy said one patient had been a young shepherd boy who was admitted with severe burns after playing with the remains of a chemical bomb. He died two days later.

He said the Iraqi military had repeatedly used chemical weapons against villages, mostly delivered from the air.

In one attack, he said aircraft had bombed the area of Qara Dagh, leaving it covered in clouds of thick smoke and the smell of rotten apples, a smell often associated by previous witnesses with poison gas attacks.

The trial was adjourned until Thursday.

REUTERS BDP RAI2129