Defiant Saddam plays to gallery

Key points

• Saddam Hussein refuses to recognise court

• Ex-dictator maintains his innocence

• The trial has been billed the most eagerly awaited of the 21st century

Key quote "I won't answer to this so-called court... Who are you? What are you?" - Saddam Hussein

Story in full "YOU know me. You are an Iraqi and you know who I am." Even after nearly two years in captivity, there was no mistaking the identity of the man standing in the white cage in the specially constructed courtroom in the heart of Baghdad's green zone.

"I won't answer to this so-called court... Who are you? What are you?" Saddam Hussein demanded to know of the judge seated before him. "I retain my constitutional rights as the president of Iraq."

No longer the president, judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin reminded him. "You are Saddam Hussein al-Majid, the former president of Iraq," he told the ex-dictator. Saddam raised a finger. "I did not say former president," he snapped.

It was billed as the trial of the 21st century, the most eagerly awaited legal showdown in years, spoken of in the same breath as Nuremberg.

Since Saddam was dragged blinking into the light from a hole in the ground outside his home town of Tikrit in December 2003, there had been almost constant speculation about if and when he would finally be brought before a court. Yesterday, the moment finally arrived.

Delayed for two hours, what ensued was little more than a procedural exercise in which the names of the eight defendants were confirmed and the charges read out. At the end of the three hours, nothing was resolved and the whole show was put off for another month. Yet the identity of the key player ensured that it remained essential viewing.

If convicted, as most expect he will be, Saddam will most likely hang. Yesterday, there was tension, defiance, arguments, even a small scuffle. As his previous appearances had shown, he is not a man to let his audience down.

The opening session, broadcast around the world with a 30-minute delay, was tightly choreographed and Iraqi lawyers said it bore little similarity to usual Iraqi criminal proceedings. Chief judge Amin, a grey-haired, sharp-featured Kurd, presided over the hearing from a raised dais looking down on the defendants.

Bronze-coloured scales of justice hung behind him. Of the judges, only Mr Amin's face was shown on television, and he conducted all the questioning. "This is the first session of case number one, the case of Dujail," the judge told the court, referring to the town where more than 140 Shiite men were put to death following an attempt on Saddam's life on 8 July, 1982.

He called the defendants into the marble-floored courtroom in the former headquarters of Saddam's Baath Party one by one. Saddam was the last to enter, shortly before noon.

He asked the jailers escorting him to slow down as he walked to his spot facing a panel of five judges.

He sat down next to co-defendant Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court.

"Peace be upon you," he said to the others, who included Saddam's former intelligence chief and half-brother Barazan Ibrahim, former vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan and other lower-level Baathist civil servants.

But it was Saddam who held centre stage. For three decades, he had used television to keep his people in thrall, and it was clear that he had given plenty of thought to his court performance.

At one stage he imperiously demanded - and got - a yellow legal pad and pencil, which was more than was allowed to the reporters in the room. At another point, he stood to argue that video evidence being shown was inadmissible in court.

Dark suited and striving for appropriately presidential detachment, Saddam leaned back in the dock after lecturing the Kurdish judge and reading aloud from the aged Koran he had carried into court.

He did not recognise a court set up by American occupiers and resented being asked to identify himself, he said, standing up to be seen above the white bars of the pen in which he faced the five, black-robed judges from the floor of the courtroom.

After the judge read the defendants their rights and the charges against them - which also include forced expulsions and illegal imprisonment - he asked each for their plea.

"Mr Saddam," he said. "Go ahead. Are you guilty or innocent?"

The ousted Iraqi leader replied quietly: "I said what I said. I am not guilty." Mr Amin read out the plea. "Innocent."

The panel of judges will both hear the case and deliver a verdict in what could be the first of several trials that Saddam may face.

Ironically, the lax grounds of proof under Saddam's own system may hasten his conviction, because the court is operating not only under its own rules - laid out when the court was created in 2003 while Iraq was still run by United States administrators - but also by a 1971 Saddam-era criminal law. That demands not reasonable doubt, but only that the judges are "satisfied" by the evidence.

Saddam's defence lawyer, Khalil al- Dulaimi, wants the case postponed so that he can have more time to prepare, though he also argues that Saddam remains the legitimate president and the court is illegal since it was created under US occupation.

As it was, the trial was postponed, but not for those reasons. After three hours and a short adjournment, Mr Amin put it back, he said afterwards, because between 30 and 40 witnesses had failed to show up.

"They were too scared to be public witnesses. We're going to work on this issue for the next session," he said.

Saddam will have to wait until 28 November for his next appearance in the spotlight, but he could not resist one last chance to play to the cameras.

Standing up and smiling when the break was called, he made to leave the room, only for the guards to grab his arms to escort him out. Angrily, Saddam shook them off.

They tried again to grab him; again, he struggled to get free.

The confrontation continued for a minute, the guards and the former leader raising their voices in anger. Eventually, the guards gave in and Saddam exited, unfettered, to fight another day.

Iraqi police last night arrested Saddam Hussein's nephew in Baghdad. Yasir Sabhawi Ibrahim, son of Saddam's half brother, Sabhawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, had been regarded as the top financier of Iraq's rampant insurgency. He had been living in Syria.

Ibrahim was arrested in a Baghdad apartment by Iraqi police after Syrian authorities forced him to return to Iraq several days ago.

"He is the most dangerous man in the insurgency," said one official who works as a co-ordinator between Iraqi authorities and the US military intelligence.