Saddam Hussein's defense team on Wednesday accused a prosecution witness of perjury and demanded the court be halted to allow an investigation into the veracity of all those the prosecution has brought to the stand during the 7-month-old trial.

Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein raises his right hand asking permission from the judge to speak during his trial at the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad Tuesday May 30,2006.The trial of Saddam Hussein and seven others accused of crimes against humanity resumed in Baghdad on Tuesday.[AP]

The accusation came after the defense showed a DVD in court, claiming it showed that prosecution witness Ali al-Haidari contradicted the testimony he gave in December about a crackdown against Shiites launched by Saddam's regime following an attack on the then-Iraqi leader in 1982 in Dujail.

Al-Haidari testified in December that he was arrested at age 14 in the Dujail sweep and was tortured with electrical shocks and beatings.

One of the videos, shown in court Wednesday, included footage of his testimony in which he insisted there was no shooting attack on Saddam in Dujail on July 8, 1982 ¡ª only celebratory shooting to mark the former Iraqi leader's visit.

The DVD then shows al-Haidari addressing a 2004 ceremony in Dujail and praising the attack on Saddam as an attempt by "sons of Dujail ... to kill the greatest tyrant in modern history."

Another of the DVDs aimed to support the defense's contention the razing of farmlands in Dujail that rook place during the crackdown was not a retaliation against its residents for the attack on Saddam. The defense has said it was part of a program to rebuild and modernize Dujail.

The video showed Saddam giving a speech declaring that now that the farmlands were destroyed, "We have a lot of land and can let everyone from Dujail have a house. ... They wanted land to build on and live in, but we were not able to before because of the nature of the land."

Chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman called a 10-minute recess after the DVDs were shown.

Saddam and his co-defendants face possible execution by hanging if convicted on the charges. They are accused of arresting hundreds of Dujail families in the crackdown, torturing and killing women and children and killing 148 Shiites who were sentenced to death for the assassination attempt.