The trial of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein will not resume until Sunday court officials have confirmed.
Hearings were due to resume this morning and was initially delayed until court official Raid Juhi confirmed to journalists it had been postponed.
The delay and judges' dispute were the latest sign of disarray in the trial of the ousted Iraqi leader and his former regime officials, calling into question the fairness of what is meant to be a landmark step in Iraq's political progress.
The postponement comes a day after a new chief judge, Raouf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman, was appointed and another jurist was ousted from the five-member panel hearing the trial of Saddam and seven co-defendants.
The changes raised new questions about the fairness of the process and provided yet more signs of disarray in a trial already marked by delays, assassinations and chaotic courtroom outbursts by Saddam.
The first chief judge, Rizgar Mohammed Amin, a Kurd, submitted his resignation on January 15 after complaints by politicians and officials that he failed to maintain control of the proceedings.
Initially, court officials said Amin would be replaced by his deputy, Saeed al-Hammash, a Shia. However, the government commission responsible for purging members of Saddam 's Baath Party complained last week that al-Hammash should not serve as chief judge because of his one-time membership in the former ruling party.
Al-Hammash was transferred off the case entirely, though court official Raid Juhi insisted the move was not connected to the Baath allegation.
The man finally appointed to stand as chief judge - Abdel-Rahman, a Kurd - was born in Halabja, the town where Saddam 's forces allegedly launched a poison gas attack in 1988 that killed 5,000 Kurds. Some relatives of Abdel-Rahman were among the dead, according to his family.
Saddam is expected to eventually go on trial for the Halabja deaths. But the current trial, which began on October 19 and was holding its eighth session today, is for the killings of about 140 Shia in a crackdown that followed a failed assassination attempt in 1982 against the former ruler in Dujail, 50 miles north of Baghdad.