The first witness to testify in the trial of Saddam Hussein gave evidence today of a massacre in an Iraqi village despite a walk-out by the defence team and impassioned tirades from the former Iraqi president.

Ahmed Mohammed Hassan al-Dujaili, a 38-year-old from Dujail, the town where gunmen tried to kill Saddam in 1982, described the killings and his imprisonment afterwards, including the moment he saw a human flesh grinder in an intelligence headquarters in Baghdad.

Over interjections from Saddam, Mr Hassan gave his version of the events surrounding the massacre of 148 people from the Shia village of Dujail in 1982 after an attempt on the former dictator's life.

Saddam and seven of his former deputies are on trial for the massacre. All eight men could face the death penalty if convicted.

Mr Hassan, a former member of the Shia Dawa party, which was behind the assassination attempt, told the court he and his family were seized after the attack on Dujail and interrogated under torture.

Mr Hassan said he was taken to an intelligence base in Baghdad run by Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam’s half-brother and one of his co-defendants.

"I swear by God, I walked by a room and... saw a grinder with blood coming out of it and human hair underneath," Mr Hassan told the court. As he spoke, Barzan, sitting behind Saddam in the dock, interrupted, shouting: "It’s a lie!"

"My brother was given electric shocks while my 77-year-old father watched," Mr Hassan continued. "One man was shot in the leg ... Some were crippled because they had arms and legs broken. My brother and I were in the same prison for four years, just a few feet apart, but we would not see each other."

Earlier, Mr Hassan testified to the mass arrests of residents and the murder of his neighbours in 1982, giving names of those who were killed and listing those he recognised from Saddam’s forces in village. He said that the Government forces entered Dujail after the foiled attempt on Saddam's life, opened fire, and imposed a curfew, before intelligence personnel carried out night-time house-to-house searches.

From the dock, an angry Saddam interjected: "Were you there?"

"Yes, of course I was there," shot back the witness, before the judge appealed for calm. "A friend of mine ... was tortured. He was actually killed in front of me and I saw that," Mr al-Dujaili said.

He added: "At 2:30 I heard a knock on the door. Security services came in and I can tell you who was killed and who is still alive. People who were arrested were taken to prison and most of them were killed there.

"They took us with them and they put us inside the car. We were taken to an area full of security services, intelligence services, party officials. The scene was frightening. It was mass detention, mass arrests. Women and men."

Again an angry Saddam shouted into the court room - "You haven’t given me pen or paper? How can I write down my ideas and notes?" - before the witness continued with his harrowing account. "I saw corpses and bodies of our neighbours. They were martyred. Some of them, we couldn’t even recognise their bodies," he said.

Mr Hassan described seeing Barzan in Dujail on the day of the attack in July 1982, wearing red cowboy boots and blue jeans, and carrying a sniper rifle. He said Saddam was there as well, and related an episode involving a boy of 15.

"Saddam said to him, ’Do you know who I am?’" recounted Mr Hassan, adding that when the boy answered "Saddam", the dictator picked up an ashtray and hit him on the head.

The testimony of Mr Hassan, who appeared in full view of the court, although some other witnesses were masked by a screen because of security fears, followed more chaotic scenes at the trial in a heavily-guarded courtroom in Baghdad's Green Zone. So far the court has held just two brief sessions after two adjournments.

This morning Saddam’s defence team stormed out of the court and then returned 90 minutes later to challenge its legitimacy. The walkout was lead by Ramsey Clark, a former US Attorney General who is representing Saddam, and Najeeb al-Nauimi, a former justice minister of Qatar who joined to Saddam’s defence team last month.

The lawyers questioned the legitimacy of the court and demanded better protection. Two lawyers for Saddam's co-defendants have been murdered in recent weeks and a third was shot in an ambush.

At one point, a bearded and neatly suited Saddam interrupted the wrangling to shout: "How is it legitimate when it was set up under the occupation?" The fallen tyrant then bellowed: "Long live Iraq. Long live the Arab nation. Long live Iraq."

Behind him, Barzan called out: "Long live Saddam." He added: "Why don’t you just execute us and get this over with?"

The trial continues.

Times Recommends

• UN may halt 400-year-old 'freedom of the seas'
• Where the Rosetta belongs can’t be set in stone
• Gas deal on hold, but Ukraine may pay in the end