Witnesses told police they saw the defendant, 42-year old Khaled Taleb, pick up a wooden table top lectern and smash it across the back of the prosecutor's head and shoulders as she sat at the bar table in front of Justice Richard Refshauge.

Taleb was restrained by a Corrective Services officer before he was joined by his colleagues and police from the nearby City Police Station who arrested Taleb. The prosecutor was not seriously hurt but was taken to hospital as a precaution.

Taleb, who was in court to answer charges of breaching a protection order brought against him by the High Court of Australia, was arrested and is expected to face court this morning to be charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Taleb, who claims to be a 5000-year-old holy man from Egypt, has been charged three times with causing damage to the High Court, only to be acquitted on mental health grounds. The homeless man was a regular sight outside the High Court for years and in 2003 was thrown out of the building for telling Chief Justice Murray Gleeson he would shut him up forever.