A cordial exchange between the judge and Saddam came after a Kurdish witness told the court how he had managed to meet Saddam to ask of the whereabouts of family members allegedly killed in the brutal "Anfal" military campaign of 1987-1988.
Seated in the dock, Saddam asked: "Why did you try to meet me when you knew I was a dictator?"
The judge, Abdullah al-Ameri, then stepped in.
"You were not a dictator," he said to Saddam, and suggested it was the people close to him who had made him look like one. Saddam thanked the judge for his intervention.
The latest exchange between Saddam and the judge is expected to further upset prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon who on Wednesday demanded Mr Ameri's resignation, saying he was too lenient toward the defendants.
Mr Ameri, who has 25 years experience and was also a judge under the former regime, dismissed the demand from Mr Faroon, who charged that the judge was allowing defendants to even threaten witnesses and their lawyers.
On Tuesday, Saddam threatened one of the lawyers as he defended the struggle of the Kurdish guerrillas, or "peshmerga" -- which means "those who face death" in Kurdish -- against the old regime.
Saddam accused him of being an agent of "Iranians and Zionists" and threatened to "crush his head".
At the outset of the trial which opened on August 21, Saddam had also threatened Mr Faroon after he charged that the deposed ruler's forces had raped Iraqi women during the Anfal campaign.
"If he says an Iraqi woman was raped in my era and he does not prove it, I will hunt him down for the rest of my life," Saddam said.
Investigative judge Raed al-Juhi later downplayed Mr Ameri's comment. "In the court, many statements are made," Mr Juhi told reporters after the trial was adjourned until next Monday.
"Anything not legal would not affect the issue and the court will continue with its neutrality. The judge is human after all," he said, adding that under
Iraqi law there were no legal grounds for the judge to step down as requested by the prosecutor.
Two witnesses testified on Thursday against Saddam and six co-defendants who face charges of mass murder of Kurds during the Anfal operations.
If found guilty the defendants will face execution by hanging.
Witness Abdullah Mohammed Hussain told the court how he challenged Saddam in 1989 after he returned from Iran, where he had fled to escape the brutal campaign which prosecutors claim killed 182,000 Kurds.
Taking the witness box, Mr Hussain described 1988 attacks on his northern village near Sulaimaniyah and recounted his meeting with Saddam, which he said had materialised after repeated requests to the Iraqi military.
"I told Saddam they (relatives) were arrested in our village," Mr Hussain said. "Saddam said ...: 'Shut up. Don't say that they went missing in Anfal,'"
Mr Hussain said as the former Iraqi leader watched from the dock.
It was at that point that Saddam and the judge had their friendly exchange.
Mr Hussain said he was later told in 2004 by the Sulaimaniyah court that the
ID cards of his relatives were found in a mass grave in Hathat, near the northern city of Mosul.
On Wednesday, four witnesses gave graphic testimonies against the accused.
Witness Omar Othman Mohammed, a peshmerga fighter from Sulaimaniyah, accused Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed "Chemical Ali," of leading the attacks and using chemical bombs.
"He (Majid) killed a large number of our peshmergas, civilians and members of the opposition Dawa and communist parties," he said, referring to a bomb attack on March 22, 1988.
"The warplanes hovered over the region and dropped balloons, apparently full of chemical weapons. Then missiles followed. A couple of them fell near my place. I saw headless bodies and parts of bodies, like arms and legs."
Another witness, Sadoon Khider Gader, also gave a gruesome account of how dogs were set loose on prisoners killed in detention centres.
"They (the prisoners) were badly treated and those who died were carried by their mates outside" the detention centre and buried, said Gader, who lost his two sons. "We saw dogs eating them (the corpses) through the windows."
Saddam has tried to justify his regime's repression of the Kurds of northern Iraq as counter-insurgency measures.