Baghdad, Iraq ? The trial of Saddam Hussein proceeded Thursday without any of the eight defendants present, after the chief judge ordered them barred from the court.

In the latest twist to the increasingly bizarre effort to bring Saddam and seven of his associates to justice for crimes committed during the former dictator’s rule, judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman cited Article 158 of Iraq’s criminal code, which he said authorizes a judge to prevent the defendants from attending.

“The court has decided to continue to keep them away from the court in the current session and to continue to examine the case against them,” Abdul-Rahman said.

Saddam and his three most senior co-defendants had boycotted the previous day’s session to protest the eviction of one of them, Saddam’s half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, on Sunday.

The judge didn’t make it clear whether he was barring the four in retaliation for their boycott or for their unruly behavior the previous day, when the court erupted in chaos after al-Tikriti was dragged yelling from the court. Saddam, along with his former vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, and the former chief of the Revolutionary Court, Awad al-Bandar, then staged a walkout in protest.

The remaining four defendants had shown no inclination to boycott, but the judge said they were also being barred for causing “chaos and noise” outside the courtroom before the session began.

With the large wooden dock in the center of the court empty, and the two witnesses who testified hidden for their own safety behind a beige curtain in a corner of the room, the session was an unusually muted affair. The witnesses described how they were tortured and beaten at the Baghdad headquarters of the Mukhabarat, or intelligence agency, after a failed assassination attempt against Saddam in the town of Dujail in 1982.

Saddam and his co-defendants are being tried in connection with the human-rights abuses committed during the crackdown that followed the assassination attempt.

After two hours of testimony from witnesses, Abdul-Rahman adjourned the proceedings until Feb. 13.