Those Iraqis determined to follow every twist of Saddam Hussein’s trial had much to absorb yesterday. They heard more than three hours of horrifying testimony from survivors of a massacre that left 148 people dead in the village of Dujail in 1982 after an attempt on Saddam’s life. One woman described being tortured with electric shocks to the head until she thought her eyes would pop out. Another, sobbing from behind a screen erected in the courtroom to mask her identity for fear of reprisals, said she had seen such atrocities that she wondered if humanity had witnessed “anything like this, in any part of the world”.

This testimony was broadcast in its entirety throughout Iraq. The trial’s domestic audience will also have gathered — but will not have seen; the judge cut the TV feed — that Saddam was ordered out of the courtroom minutes into the session, having rejected a new team of court-appointed defence lawyers summoned to replace an old team that itself stormed out in protest. Their grievance was the ejection of Saddam’s half-brother for his opening remarks, in which he called the court “the daughter of a whore”.

The first “trial of the century” of this century was always going to be tense. It has proved, so far, both tense and chaotic. Saddam has treated it like a heaven-sent soapbox from which to denounce the sporadic proceedings and the regime that has replaced his. Judge Raouf Abdul Rahman, presiding yesterday for the first time, is the third judge appointed to the case in as many months. Witness statements have been timid and at times incoherent. The prosecution has betrayed its inexperience at every turn, even though the Dujail charges have been presented first because they are relatively straightfoward.

There is a real risk of this trial, like that of Slobodan Milosevic, lasting years and becoming a quagmire of legalistic pedantry and public ridicule. But if urgent practical steps are taken there are also grounds to hope that Saddam’s victims will not testify in vain. Such steps should include improved security for all participants, but especially for the defence lawyers, two of whom have already been murdered for their involvement; better preparation of prosecution witnesses, who have too often appeared bewildered when testifying; and a clear warning to Saddam, who has so far chosen to re-present himself, that the trial will continue with or without his co-operation.

The first chief judge in the case tolerated too much of the ex-dictator’s bluster and complained of political pressure to speed up the trial. The second was found to be a former Baath party member. Judge Rahman, by contrast, appears both tough and independent enough to satisfy Iraq’s majority Shias and his own Kurdish minority. He may even be able to impress on Saddam the futility of boycotting proceedings, so that justice is not only done, but seen to be done. If so, the ultimate goal of using this trial as a forum for reconciliation between Shias and Sunnis remains within reach. But even if Saddam continues to abuse the due process afforded him (but denied by him to his tens of thousands of victims), the trial must go on.

It may be true, as the defence contends, that a completely fair trial for Saddam is impossible inside Iraq. But to try him as fairly as possible is Iraq’s task nonetheless; and in this case more than most, if the evidence can only be heard it will speak for itself.