Lebanese lawyer Bushra Khalil had returned to the courtroom after a long absence following her expulsion in early April by judge Rauf Abdel Rahman for disrupting the proceedings.
But as the trial resumed an argument erupted and the judge ordered her thrown out again. She was escorted from the courtroom screaming, and tossing her robes at the judge, drawing protests from Saddam and other lawyers.
"You have to stick to the rules," the judge told her. "You are a lawyer, you should behave by the rules."
As Ms Khalil was being removed, Saddam rose from the dock and gave the defiant statement that has become his signature at each session.
"I am Saddam Hussein. I am the president of Iraq," he said with a raised fist.
"You were president, now you are the defendant," retorted the judge.
Another defence lawyer complained about Ms Khalil's ejection, saying: "There is no law that gives the court the right to throw the lawyer out. We are defending these people, who were the honour of the nation. You have no right to insult a lawyer."
"Calm down! Don't shout," Abdel Rahman retorted.
Saddam and his seven co-defendants face charges of crimes against humanity, including murder and torture over the deaths of 148 Shi'ites, and could face execution by hanging if found guilty.
Former revolutionary court judge Awad al-Bandar, who sentenced the Shi'ites from the village of Dujail to death after an attempt on Saddam's life there in 1982, was among the eight defendants in court.
A half-brother of Saddam, Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, testified for both the former president and another half-brother who is also in the dock, Barzan al-Takriti, a former Iraqi intelligence chief.
"When I was in the security department, I was a lot tougher than Barzan in my job," he said of his brother Barzan.
Sabawi, who was arrested in February last year near the Syrian border and accused of financing the insurgency, had words of praise for Iraq's former strongman.
"In his childhood, he was not vengeful or hateful ... Two days after the assassination attempt, I talked to him ... He was not upset, he was not furious, unlike me," the defence witness said.
Sabawi drew fire from the judge when he insisted on standing up and saluting "out of respect for my brother, president Saddam Hussein", who said they had not seen each other for more than three years.
Abdel Rahman said in future witnesses would be confined to their box.
Another witness, appearing behind a curtain to hide his identity, said Barzan, as chief of the Iraqi "mukhabarat" (intelligence), was not involved in the Dujail investigation.
"Political and religious movements were the responsibility of internal security, not intelligence," he said.
The trial, which opened on October 19, has been marred by repeated tirades from Saddam and other defendants, the murder of two defence lawyers and the January resignation of the first chief judge.