The only defendant in the court, a composed Saddam Hussein walked into the tribunal and immediately launched into a tirade against the Interior Ministry as the chief judge Rauf Abdel Rahman opened the session.
Saddam described the ministry as a "side that kills thousands in the street and tortures them."
He was interrupted by the judge who told him to refrain from political statements to which Saddam replied: "you're scared of the interior minister, he doesn't scare my dog."
Saddam and seven other co-defendants are currently on trial for allegedly executing more than 140 inhabitants of the Shi'ite village of Dujail, allegedly in retribution of an assassination attempt there against the deposed president in 1982.
Short session expected
The recess in this trial was originally meant to give the judges time to draft the specific charges in the case, re-examine evidence and move the trial to the next phase, but much still remains to be done, chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Mussawi said last week.
Mussawi also claims that the prosecution has new documents linking the defendants to the case.
"They involve communications and messages exchanged between high officials" of the previous regime over the Dujail affair”, Mussawi said.
Documents will be central to tying the defendants to the crimes they are charged with, but several have cast doubt on the authenticity of the papers presented so far, many of which bear their signatures.
Wednesday’s court session is expected to be short one, an unnamed US official saying that the court will be adjourned to permit experts to analyse handwriting on the disputed documents, which is expected to take two weeks.
Moving forward
Delays have been common in this trial, the earlier 17 sessions have so far have seen boycotts from defendants and their lawyers, lawyers assassinated, judges resigning and repeated grandstanding by Saddam and other former regime officials in the dock.
But observers say the trial is moving slowly forward.
"What's been important about the last couple of sessions in March is that there has been no major crisis, which is a change," said Miranda Sissons, a senior associate with the International
Centre for Transitional Justice observing the trial.
The Iraqi High Tribunal Tuesday said it would charge Saddam and six others for their role in a separate genocide, the killing of Kurds in the late 1980s during the Anfal campaign.