Legal experts said they hoped Saddam's six co-defendants would be more forthcoming with Saddam no longer listening.

Legal scholar Tariq Harb said the trial could make more progress without Saddam, who sometimes quietly glared at witnesses, shouted at them, or launched nationalists tirades that got him thrown out of court.

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"The trial will be more elastic and easy. It will clarify and expose more facts because Saddam Hussein's disappearance from the dock will encourage other defendants to mention some facts that they were afraid to divulge when he was with them," Harb said.

Also Monday, the US military announced the deaths of two more American soldiers: one from combat wounds in Salahuddin province, which includes Saddam's hometown, and another from small-arms fire north of Baghdad.

And the White House said President Bush would lay out his new approach for the Iraq war in a speech Wednesday. Bush was expected to announce an increase of as many as 20,000 US troops in a bid to contain sectarian warfare.

Iraqi police, meanwhile, reported the discovery of 27 tortured bodies in the capital and the deaths of 23 other people, including nine Shiite workers gunned down in a minibus on their way to the Baghdad airport.

Aside from al-Majid, the co-defendants in the so-called Anfal trial are former Defense Minister Sultan Hashim al-Tai, who was the commander of Task Force Anfal and head of the Iraqi army 1st Corps; Sabir al-Douri, Saddam's military intelligence chief; Taher Tawfiq al-Ani, former governor of Mosul and head of the Northern Affairs Committee; Hussein Rashid Mohammed, former deputy director of operations for the Iraqi armed forces and Farhan Mutlaq Saleh, former head of military intelligence's eastern regional office.

When al-Majid first took his seat in court Monday, he tried to turn on his microphone to speak publicly. The judge quickly shut it off.

Before the trial adjourned until Jan. 11, Al-Faroon also presented a document allegedly signed by al-Ani, calling for the execution of 10 members of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party headed by current Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. Al-Ani denied the handwriting was his.

"This is not my signature and I'm sure of that," he told the court.

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