LONDON – Saddam Hussein was beaten up while he was being interrogated by a judge after he insulted two of the most revered figures in Shiite Islam, it emerged yesterday.

According to an Iraqi lawyer close to the government in Baghdad, the altercation took place in July while Saddam was being investigated ahead of his war crimes trial, which opened last month.

The dictator was apparently being questioned about the brutal suppression of a Shiite uprising in 1991, after his defeat in the war to expel his forces from Kuwait. Saddam admitted helicopters were used to fire on civilians in the city of Karbala, arguing that they were targeting the armed opposition.

Asked whether the shrines of the Imams Hussein and Abbas in the city had been attacked by Iraqi forces, Saddam at first pretended not to know the two holy figures of Shia Islam. But he then said: “Who do you mean? Those manayich [buggers]?” According to the Iraqi lawyer, two of the court’s clerks who had been taking notes then lunged at the former dictator and started to punch him.

Saddam fought back until the judge succeeded in restoring order, but not before the ex-dictator’s head was bruised. American guards posted outside the makeshift courthouse in Baghdad found the incident amusing and did not intervene, the lawyer claimed.

Rumors of the punch-up had circulated in the past, and for a while Saddam’s defense lawyers refused to cooperate with the court in protest at the alleged assault.

The Iraqi special tribunal at the time denied the accusation. But the latest details were published yesterday by the AFP news agency, quoting “an Iraqi lawyer briefed by investigative judges in the Iraqi High Tribunal.”

He said Saddam was being “cooperative, so long as the judges treat him with respect.”

The Saddam trial is due to resume on November 28, though his defense team is demanding that the venue be moved abroad after a series of deaths and attacks.

* Five American marines and 16 insurgents were killed in a firefight in western Iraq yesterday. The battle took place in New Ubaydi, near the Syrian border, where American forces are engaged in Operation Steel Curtain, an offensive against Al Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgency.