Doctor Clyde Collins Snow, a forensic anthropologist from Oklahoma in the United States, described to the court how experts exhumed the mass grave of 27 people killed by a firing squad in the village of Koremi in Dohuk province.

Snow was the first expert witness presented by the prosecution to testify in the trial of the ousted Iraqi president and said he visited the village in 1992, along with other human rights activists and experts.

"I saw the bones were in excellent condition after four years, there was clothing and some of the bones had wounds consistent with gunshot wounds," Snow said, as he showed slides and pictures of young men and boys buried in the grave.

Snow also showed how the team, visiting at a time when the region was held by the Kurds in defiance of Baghdad, found a skull with a green canine after one family told him that their relative who was killed had a gold tooth.

"It turned out to be brass that turned green after someone died as it oxidises," Snow said.

He also showed photos of bullet holes and skeletal bones such as arms, legs, ribs and a pelvis that had been smashed by bullets.

"We did not have resources to investigate all of the cases but we think Koremi was typical of what happened in all these villages," Snow said.

Before the trial was adjourned to Wednesday, Snow told the court that he examined 27 bodies which had around 87 wounds and indicated the wounds in a bar chart to show which body areas took the bullets.

He also described how an old man, Hassan Salih, and his five year-old grandson Dejwar were allegedly killed by chemical attacks on Berjini village on August 25, 1988.

He said they exhumed the bodies and found no traces of a violent death.

"We have an old man and a young boy. What's the probability of both dying in the same place and the same time from natural causes?"

He said the experts took "soil samples from the north face, south face and bottom of the crater and took them to the United States before sending them to England's Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment.

"A few months later they analysed these samples and in two of them they found traces of mustard gas."

Before Snow testified, Saddam objected to a US expert taking the stand, insisting on an international team to be drawn from countries that do not form part of the occupation forces.

"When I speak, nobody should think that I'm defending Saddam Hussein. You can only be executed once and not 10 times. I am defending the course of this nation," said Saddam.

"Iraq is full of skeletal remains over the centuries. Just give me 10 days and I'll show you a grave with 400 bodies of Arabs and Kurds," he said.

Saddam and six co-defendants are accused of killing 182,000 Kurds during the campaign, when government troops swept through Kurdistan in 1988, burning and bombing thousands of villages.

Saddam and his former aides say it was a legitimate counter-insurgency operation against Kurdish separatists at a time when the country was locked in war with neighbouring Iran.

The accused -- including Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" -- all face the death penalty if convicted. Saddam and Majid are the only defendants facing a charge of genocide.

Prior to Snow's testimony, former guerrilla figher Khudur Qadir Mohammed, now living in the United States, said he was captured by soldiers, kept in solitary confinement and later taken to a trench where a firing squad shot all those who had been held.

He said he faked death and was saved by the bodies of others which protected him from the hail of bullets. He showed the court a bullet scar on his shoulder.

After boycotting the past dozen sessions, defendants' lawyers are once again attending the trial, save those of the main accused, Saddam and his cousin.

Saddam and three others of his former regime have already been sentenced to death by hanging in a previous trial where they were convicted of killing 148 Shiites from the village of Dujail in the early 1980s.

In Geneva, a working party of the United Nations Rights Council said Tuesday that Saddam's first trial fell so far short of international standards that his detention was "arbitrary".

It urged the Iraqi government "to refrain from carrying out the sentence of death by hanging imposed in a proceeding which does not meet applicable standards of a fair trial".

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