Sunday's session will be closely watched to see how the new judge handles what has up until now been a tumultuous chamber, characterized by outbursts from both angry defendants and prosecutors.

The trial is to pick up four days after the first session of the new year was adjourned early due, according to the court, to the absence of the necessary witnesses.

But the appointment of the new presiding judge following the January resignation of Rizkar Mohammed Amin, the chief judge and public face of the trial for its past seven sessions, has increasingly raised questions.

A leading human rights watchdog said Amin's resignation has cast doubt on the fairness of the whole trial, which has also seen two defence lawyers murdered.

Several members of parliament and government officials had publicly criticized Amin for what they viewed as lenient treatment of Saddam and his seven co-defendants, on trial for the killing of 148 inhabitants of the Shiite village of Dujail in 1982.

"The demand for presiding judge Rizkar Amin's dismissal, which contributed to his resignation, was nothing less than an attack on judicial independence," said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch, in a statement.

Nehal Bhuta, also with Human Rights Watch, noted that Amin had shown great progress over the course of the trial and was respected for his non-partisan approach to a very politically loaded case.

"Amin was clearly even-handed and had great integrity and he was a very attractive face for justice in the new Iraq," he said.

Amin's successor was originally expected to be Said al-Hammashi, a Shiite and the next senior judge on the five-person panel. However, he was transferred off the court after the de-Baathification committee protested over his appointment due to his alleged membership in the former ruling party.

The reshuffle of the judges also means that a significant proportion of the panel will not have been present for the previous 15 witnesses' testimony.

"The resignation of Judge Amin and the transfer of Judge al-Hammashi mean that two of the five judges who have heard the witness testimony are now off the case," noted Dicker.

"It will be difficult for the new judges to impartially evaluate the testimony they missed, damaging the integrity of the trial."

A judge from outside the chamber altogether, Rauf Rasheed Abdel Rahman, also a Kurd, was appointed to head the trial, a move that reports say has irked the other judges.

Abdel Rahman, 64, is the vice president of the criminal court in the northern town of Arbil and helped found the human rights organization of the Kurdish autonomous region in 1991.

He was twice arrested by the Iraqi government and at one point was tortured so badly he was partly paralyzed.

Abdel Rahman was born in Halabja, the Kurdish town bombed by Saddam's forces with chemical weapons in 1988 -- another of the events for which Saddam could be tried later.

The trial is to begin with further prosecution witnesses from Dujail who will describe suffering at the hands of Saddam and his aides. The witnesses' identities and voices will most likely be concealed.

Subsequent sessions will feature officials of the former regime testifying about what happened in Dujail, followed by documentary evidence aiming to link the defendants to the events.