"American democracy has shown its true face in greater Iraq. Saddam Hussein has been prevented from carrying his watch," the former Iraqi leader said, speaking of himself in the third person. "My old watch along with my money were stolen, and my daughter, who had to go into exile, sent me a watch but they confiscated it," he told the court in which he is facing trial.
"The dishdasha [traditional Arab robe] that he [Saddam] wore was torn by those who sought to humiliate him," Saddam added.
Saddam's comments drew laughter from the courtroom and his half-brother, Barzan Al Tikriti, one of the eight co-accused, called on the presiding judge to have the laughter stop.
But Saddam turned to his relative saying: "Let the monkeys laugh in their trees. The lion ignores them".
He also lashed out at Israeli politician Shimon Peres, the current US president and his father.
"I don't care if Peres wants to judge me. Let him be damned along with his feeble state. And may the pox be on Bush and his father," Saddam added.
Earlier in the day he branding officials as "liars" for dismissing charges he was tortured by his American jailers.
"The White House are liars. They said Iraq had chemical weapons. They lied again when they said I had not been beaten," he told the court trying him on charges of crimes against humanity.
Prosecution witnesses, testifying anonymously from behind a screen, told of torture under Saddam's regime, a day after the former dictator sought to turn the table on accusers by charging that his jailers were beating and torturing him.
The White House dismissed his allegations as "preposterous", and a US diplomat in Baghdad suggested Saddam was "grandstanding" to deflect attention from charges of torture levelled against at least one of his seven co-accused.
"Zionists and the US administration hate Saddam," he said. "They said I had ties to terrorism, but later acknowledged that I did not.
"I had my injuries documented by three American [medical] teams," he told the Iraqi High Tribunal. "I have been hit by the Americans and tortured," said Saddam, who has been detained by US forces since his capture two years ago.
"Yes, I've been beaten on every place of my body and the signs are all over my body," he told the court. "We were beaten by the Americans and we were tortured, everyone of us," he said, pointing to his co-defendants.
Investigation judge Raed Al Juhi later told reporters this was the first he had heard of such charges.
"My job requires me to ask each of the defendants if he has been abused, and up until now I have received no complaints from the defendants or their lawyers," he said.
But he added that Saddam's accusations would be investigated anyway.
"We are glad that this trial is moving smoothly and continuously, and all players in the trial, defence, lawyers, defendants and witnesses are given a fair chance to express themselves," he added.
Saddam's half-brother and co-defendant, Barzan Ibrahim Hassan Al Tikriti, the former head of the feared secret police, also accused his jailers of torturing him.
"They asked me questions and when I asked to be able to explain things they demanded that I reply by 'yes' or 'no' and slapped me across the face while I had handcuffs on," he said.
It was not immediately clear if he was referring to US or Iraqi interrogators.
Barzan also repeatedly interrupted the court, protesting at one stage that much of what he was saying was being edited out of video footage of the trial which is being broadcast on televisions with a 20-minute delay.
"If the sound is cut off once again, then I don't know about my comrades but I personally won't attend again. This is unjust and undemocratic," he said.
Prosecutors have accused the defendants of grand-standing in a bid to turn the trial into a political forum for their views.
A prosecutor then offered to resign, saying presiding judge Rizkar Mohammed Amin was not keeping proper order in the court and was allowing defendants to speak out of order.
Amin rejected his resignation.
Barzan then accused the prosecutors of being former members of Baath, the ruling party under Saddam.
"This is the biggest insult there is, accusing me of belonging to the bloody Baath," one of the prosecutors answered.
Barzan then stood up shouting: "Long live the Baath".
This too was edited out of video footage broadcast from the courthouse.
In another incident, Amin ejected a bailiff after defendants alleged he had threatened them. It was not immediately clear who had allegedly been threatened, or in what way.
The defendants, who have pleaded not guilty, are charged with murdering 148 Shia villagers, after Saddam escaped an assassination attempt in the town of Dujail in July 1982.
They face the death penalty if convicted.
Two witnesses testified on Thursday in court as to the torture that took place when security forces crackdown on Dujail following the 1982 assassination attempt.
One witness, speaking from behind a screen, said dozens of local people were detained and tortured.
"They had plastic pipes melted onto their bodies," he said.
When one prisoner was returned from interrogation "he couldn't sit down, he had to kneel, the skin on his back had peeled," he added.
Later when the detainees were transferred to Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, "they would take men into the hallway and make them crawl on the ground and then would hit them with hoses," he told the court.
"The beatings often happened in front of the families" as men, women and children were all held at the prison, he added.
Former Qatari justice minister Najib Al Nuami, a member of the defence team, complained that the accusations referred to crimes allegedly committed by unidentified guards or intelligence officials rather than by the eight defendants.
The witness "is holding the leadership accountable for what happened to him and this is what is happening here" in this court case, he said.
Only one of the three prosecution witnesses who testified on Wednesday directly accused one of the accused, Barzan, of being present during torture sessions.
"He was there eating grapes while I screamed," he told the court.
The court was expected to adjourn until mid-January because of the announcement of Iraq's election results, holidays and the Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.
© 2005 Agence France-Presse
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