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BAGHDAD, Dec 22: The trial of Saddam Hussein resumed Thursday with the ousted Iraqi president calling US authorities liars for rejecting his charges of torture by US forces, report agencies.
"The White House are liars. They said Iraq had chemical weapons. They lied again when they said I had not been beaten," he told the court trying him on charges of crimes against humanity.
Prosecution witnesses, meanwhile, gave more testimony on torture under Saddam's regime a day after he sought to turn the table on accusers by charging that his American jailers were beating and torturing him.
The White House dismissed his allegations as "preposterous" and a US diplomat in Baghdad suggested Saddam was "grandstanding" to deflect attention from charges of torture levelled against at least one of his seven co-accused.
Saddam referred to himself in the third person Thursday, saying: "Zionists and the US administration hate Saddam. They said I had ties to terrorism, but later acknowledged that I did not.
"I had my injuries documented by three American (medical) teams," he told the Iraqi High Tribunal.
Saddam and seven former aides, including half-brother Barzan Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti who headed the secret police at the time, are on trial for the murder of 148 Shiite villagers, killed or tortured to death after the then president escaped an assassination attempt in the town of Dujail in July 1982.
They have pleaded not guilty to the charges, but face the death penalty if convicted.
Three witnesses for the prosecution testified on Wednesday when the trial resumed after a two-week adjournment called because of general elections on December 15.
Two testified anonymously from behind a blue screen, saying they had been tortured and illegally jailed in the wake of the assassination attempt when the secret police clamped down on the town, arresting hundreds of men, women and children.
A third man, Ali Mohammed Hussein al-Haydari, who testified in full view of the cameras and witnesses, described how, at age 14, he was arrested, beaten and jailed without trial before being exiled for several years to a remote desert settlement.
One of the witnesses directly implicated Barzan, saying he oversaw some of the torture sessions, in one case eating grapes as interrogators ran electricity through his body.
After spending much of the day silently listening to the witnesses and taking notes, Saddam spoke out saying he too had been tortured by his Americans captors.
"I have been hit by the Americans and tortured," said Saddam, who has been detained by US forces since his capture two years ago.
"Yes, I've been beaten on every place of my body and the signs are all over my body," he told the court.
"We were beaten by the Americans and we were tortured, everyone of us," he said, pointing to his co-defendants.
Asked about the charge, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters: "I think that's one of the most preposterous things I've heard from Saddam Hussein recently.
"Saddam Hussein is being treated the exact opposite of the way his regime treated those he imprisoned and tortured simply for expressing their opinions."
US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the allegation was "highly ironic" given the record of Saddam's regime, and that there was no evidence to back up his claim of having been abused.
"He's been given to grandstanding in this trial," McCormack said. "But where the focus should be is on the testimony of those people who were victimized by the tyranny, the oppression and the violence of Saddam Hussein."
An official with the US embassy in Iraq, Christopher Reid, said during an online chat on the White House Internet site that Saddam "made up the allegations and used them to ambush the judge and distract from the testimony.
An Iraqi newspaper urged the judges to crack down on the former president rather than allowing him to speak whenever he chose.
"In the name of God, the martyrs and the honor of Iraq, revise the court's composition and name judges who are not just patient and well-mannered," the Al-Sabah Al-Jadid newspaper said.
The court was expected to adjourn Thursday until mid-January because of the announcement of Iraq's election results, holidays and the Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.
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