Saddam Hussein admitted today that he signed orders leading to the execution of dozens of Shias in the 1980s but said he was acting within the law as Iraq's president.
As he faced his judges in a Baghdad courtroom, bombs killed about 30 people after a week of the bloodiest sectarian violence since US forces overthrew his Sunni-led government in 2003.
The attacks have pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war. One car bomb killed 25 in mainly Shia east Baghdad, one of three such attacks just before the court sat; after dark, mortar rounds shook the city centre and residents reported a gunbattle around a Sunni mosque in the south of the capital.
Police near the northern city of Kirkuk said a police convoy was ambushed and dozens of officers were unaccounted for.
Saddam, who faces hanging if convicted of crimes against humanity, told the court in a measured speech that an order to try 148 men from the Shia town of Dujail after an attempt on his life there in 1982 was a legal process, as was the razing of farms around the town after their owners were executed.
"Where is the crime?" he asked, his manner calm compared to tirades he has previously launched during four months of proceedings which he has derided as a show trial mounted by the Shia- and Kurdish-led government backed by the United States.
Prosecutors, who previously introduced witnesses to testify to torture in Saddam's prisons, presented an array of documents, an audiotape of Saddam talking to an official and aerial photographs showing where date palm groves were flattened in an effort to tie Saddam personally to the alleged crimes.
The court adjourned to March 12th.