BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – Saddam Hussein’s defense lawyers are demanding that the new chief judge be removed before they will end their boycott of the trial, which resumes today after a stormy session where the former president was tossed out.

Khalil al-Dulaimi and Khamis al-Obeidi said they have written to the Iraqi High Tribunal to demand that Raouf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman, who was named chief judge last week, be removed from the current trial and any other legal proceedings against Saddam.

Otherwise, they would not attend any more sessions, they said. Al-Dulaimi also said Saddam would boycott the trial Wednesday.

But chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Mousawi said Saddam and the seven other defendants would be brought to the court by force if necessary.

The two Iraqi lawyers told The Associated Press that they believed Abdel-Rahman, a Kurd, was biased because his hometown of Halabja was subjected to a 1988 poison gas attack allegedly ordered by the former president.

Some 5,000 Kurds were killed in that attack, including several of Abdel-Rahman’s relatives.

Saddam and seven co-defendants, including his half brother and one-time intelligence chief, Barzan Ibrahim, are on trial in the deaths of more than 140 Shiites after a 1982 attempt on the ex-president’s life in the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad.

They face death by hanging if convicted.

“We will demand that this judge be removed from the trial and any other trials involving my client,” al-Dulaimi said by telephone from Amman, Jordan.

Al-Dulaimi, who heads Saddam’s defense team, described Abdel-Rahman as a “legal adversary of my client.”

Arab media reports claimed Abdel-Rahman had been detained and tortured in the 1980s by Saddam’s security agents. Efforts to contact Abdel-Rahman were unsuccessful.

However, another judge who is not part of the Dujail trial said Abdel-Rahman suffered permanent injuries to his back and one of his legs due to torture. The judge spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the Saddam case.

During Sunday’s stormy session, Abdel-Rahman ordered Saddam out of the courtroom for arguing with him over the former president’s refusal to accept court-appointed lawyers. The original defense team had walked out in protest after the judge threw out a Jordanian lawyer together with Ibrahim.

Two more defendants were ordered out after they also refused the court-appointed attorneys.

Al-Dulaimi and al-Obeidi said Iraqi defendants have the right to reject court-appointed lawyers.

Although the trial could proceed with Saddam’s court-appointed lawyers, the absence of the former leader and his defense team would further undermine the credibility of the proceedings. The trial has already been beset by long delays, the assassination of two defense lawyers and the resignation of its first chief judge amid allegations he failed to rein in Saddam.

The former chief judge, Rizqar Mohammed Amin, also a Kurd, showed great leniency toward Saddam and his half brother in the seven sessions he chaired since the trial began Oct. 19.

By contrast, Abdel-Rahman made clear Sunday his style would be different.

He told the court that he would not tolerate political speeches from the defendants or their lawyers. He angrily told Ibrahim to be quiet before he was dragged out by burly bailiffs.