"I have a request here that I don't want to be in this cage anymore," Saddam argued waving with a yellow paper.

"I am the presiding judge, I decide your presence and your absence," judge Muhammed al-Ureybi told Saddam.

"Get him out," the judge ordered, pointing to the guards to take him out.

The argument started when codefendant Sabri al-Douri, director of military intelligence during Operation Anfal, referred at another codefendant, the former defense minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed by his military rank of lieutenant general.

The court rejects the codefendants be named by their former ranks.