Baghdad, Iraq ? A combative Saddam Hussein re-emerged for the world to see Thursday, rejecting an Iraqi judge’s charges of massacres and chemical-gas attacks and denouncing his first day in court as “theater by Bush the criminal.”

Wearing an ill-fitting pinstriped jacket provided by the U.S. military, the man who once lorded over 26 million Iraqis appeared along with 11 of his top aides in a U.S. Army courthouse on the grounds of his former palace on the edge of Baghdad.

The 12 men accused of masterminding 35 years of repression and savagery struck every pose from fear and resignation to defiance and contempt during the 4 1/2 hours of hearings in which they heard the litany of charges against them. In the end, most acquiesced to the process unfolding around them, and of the dozen defendants, only Saddam refused to sign a list of charges until he could see a lawyer.

“I am Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq,” he declared, echoing the words he uttered seven months ago, when U.S. troops plucked him from an underground hiding place on a farm near his hometown.

Expectations shaken

Akin to arraignments in the West, the hearings raised the curtain on the process by which Iraq will seek to reconcile 35 years of Baath Party tyranny and account for the nation’s darkest chapters. Full trials are not expected until next year, but Thursday’s proceedings — heavily guarded with only a limited audience — publicly revealed the charges against Saddam and his aides, and offered Iraqis their first glimpse of once-unthinkable images: men they long feared, now seated before a judge.

The event seemed no less startling to the defendants themselves, once-privileged members of Saddam’s inner circle, now reduced to off-the-rack courtroom clothes and un-dyed hair. Some looked disheveled and confused after months of confinement. Once known for their formidable appetites for liquor, women and brutality, each of them arrived in court invoking God and the sanctity of their legal rights.

Trials won’t be easy

The prosecution of Saddam and the others still faces daunting challenges. Documentary and forensic investigations are stalled by violence, while mountains of government documents are scattered across a range of Iraqi political parties and U.S. agencies. Some international human-rights advocates also question whether Iraq has the expertise or the political stability to conduct a fair and credible trial.

This account of courtroom dialogue and scenes is based on video, as well as briefings and translations provided afterward by two journalists from CNN and The New York Times who were selected by the U.S. military to attend.

The charges

In this image cleared by the U.S. military, Saddam Hussein appears in a courtroom at Camp Victory, a former palace of his on the outskirts of Baghdad. A judge charged Saddam Thursday with massacre and other crimes.

In a 26-minute appearance, Saddam heard seven preliminary charges against him, recalling some of the most notorious episodes from his nearly 24 years as Iraqi president: chemical-gas attacks on the Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988, the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and the brutal suppression of a Shiite Muslim uprising the following year. He was also charged with slaughtering the Kurdish Barzani clan in 1983, the 1986-88 effort to displace Kurds, known as the “Anfal campaign,” as well as 30 years of killing the members of political parties.

A formal indictment will be delivered later, said Salem Chalabi, director of the Iraqi Special Tribunal, which was established to investigate and try these cases. Formal charges are expected to include war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

Back in his palace

Saddam was transported in a blue prison jumpsuit by helicopter Wednesday from an undisclosed U.S.-run jail where he has been held since his arrest Dec. 13. Transferred to a brown armored bus, he had his wrists shackled to his waist and leg irons when he arrived at the single-story sandstone courthouse on the site of sprawling Camp Victory, a former Saddam palace that now serves as the headquarters for U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

After he changed into his suit jacket and brown trousers, guards escorted him to his seat in the courtroom. He looked considerably thinner than the hale profile he cut in office, his weight loss accentuated by the oversized white shirt that hung off his neck without a tie. With short dark hair swept back and a trim beard streaked in white, he was a far cry from the wild-maned and thickly bearded figure immortalized on film submitting to a dental exam after his capture last year.

Entering the courtroom, he nervously scanned the simple, five-sided courtroom, focusing on a seating area that held some 35 observers, including top Iraqi politicians, reporters and U.S. military officers. Guards seated him in a lone chair, 5 or 6 feet directly across from the judge, whose identity is withheld for his protection.

After declaring his name and his title as president, Saddam seemed genuinely puzzled about the proceeding before chastising the young judge for working “under the orders of the coalition.” The judge, however, retorted that he had been appointed to the bench under Saddam’s regime — a revelation that exposed Saddam’s fundamental confusion over how he could be tried by the nation he once ruled.

“You are using a law that was issued by me to try me,” Saddam said, his voice thin with exasperation. “I am a man who studied the law and I ask you how you should call upon a president elected by the people and put him on trial by a law he issued himself.”

‘All theater’

Saddam did not miss an opportunity to taunt his American foes. “You know that this is all a theater by Bush the criminal to help him with his campaign,” he said.

Asked if he could afford a lawyer, he glanced at the panel of American observers and said: “The Americans say I have millions hidden in Switzerland. How can I not have the money to pay for one?”

At the close of his hearing, when the judge produced a document for Saddam to sign, he declined to sign it until he speaks with a lawyer. A court official said later that the refusal to sign would have no bearing on the legal process.

His deputies were hardly as combative. Appearing one after another, they were a showcase of names from the darkest corners of Iraqi political history, including former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s smooth-talking former frontman in the West; Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as “Chemical Ali,” and former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan.

Few of the defendants seemed as unnerved by the process — and the frequent mention of the death penalty — as Aziz, the once-proudly pugnacious diplomat. When confronted with the charges of “deliberate killing” in 1979 and 1991, Aziz grew agitated and demanded to know how he could be responsible for the government he represented.

“If there is a crime, then the moral responsibility rests with the leadership. But a member of the leadership cannot be held personally responsible. I never killed anybody by any direct act,” he said.

“But you are accused of it,” the judge responded.

“I need a lawyer,” Aziz said finally.