Their decision came after two weeks of proceedings, at times bizarre, in which they listened stonefaced to testimony from several FBI agents, an investigator from the Navy Criminal Investigative Service, experts on war crimes law, a university professor specializing in central Asian history, military officers who served in Afghanistan, and even testimony from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11 (who submitted written answers to questions).

The prosecution tried to portray Hamdan as a member of Osama bin Laden’s inner circle who knew full-well al-Qaida’s intentions and helped make the 9/11 terrorist attacks possible by serving as his loyal driver and bodyguard. They said he was a committed ideologue who pledged “bayat” — a solemn oath — to bin Laden and that he was charged with driving the getaway vehicle should bin Laden’s convoy ever come under attack.

“Salim Hamdan was al-Qaida’s last line of defense,” said John Murphy, one of several government prosecutors. “He was a bayat-pledged al-Qaida warrior who was captured on the battlefield bringing weapons to the front.”

The defense, by contrast, portrayed Hamdan as one of seven lowly drivers, a Yemeni with a fourth-grade education who performed a simple duty in exchange for wages. They claimed that he had never sworn a loyalty oath to bin Laden. They also said he was a cooperative witness who offered to help U.S. investigators find senior al-Qaida leadership — in other words, someone who should have been given a deal to help the United States capture and convict senior al-Qaida members.

“Mr. Hamdan was a salaried employee,” said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, part of Hamdan’s four-man defense team, adding that much of the time Hamdan was working for bin Laden, he didn’t even know where he was driving. “No one is going to say a conspiracy didn’t happen, but Salim Hamdan is not part of it. This is a classic case of guilt by association,” Mizer said.

Ironically, although he was sitting in the dock, Hamdan did not have much riding on the trial. Even if the jury had acquitted him of all charges, he could be imprisoned indefinitely at Guantánamo because the Bush administration maintains that it can continue to hold enemy combatants until the end of the “global war on terror.” Hamdan’s lawyers argued from the get-go that their client didn’t have much of a chance because the military commissions’ rules were stacked against him. But they mounted a spirited and vigorous defense nonetheless, both to defend their client and also to expose the flaws in a system they believe makes a mockery of justice.

The prosecution, too, knew that it was the heavily criticized military commissions and the Bush administration’s “war on terror” policies that were on trial as much as Hamdan was, so it went out of its way to suppress or classify any evidence that exposed U.S. cruelty, mistreatment and possibly even ineptitude. (It was aided in its efforts by a courtroom censor, James Powell, the Office of the Military Commission’s security officer, who pressed a button that flashed a red light on the judge’s bench whenever the defense uttered something that he thought should be classified.)

It was with that backdrop that both sides entered the makeshift courtroom on the top of a hill overlooking the Caribbean to make their case.

The defense began the trial at a disadvantage. Although it had requested, and the government was ordered to provide, all records relating to Hamdan’s confinement in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo, they were not forthcoming. The prosecution provided some 600 pages of detention records (all classified as secret) nine days before the trial, and another 500 pages at 9:15 p.m. the night before the trial. Some continued to trickle in as the trial was under way. Others never arrived at all.

The documents arrived in what the defense said were “three data dumps,” not grouped into any category, not in any chronological order, much of it undated, full of acronyms, and sometimes with no indication of how they related to the accused. So the defense team was left “feverishly trying to comb through these records” while at the same time conducting the defense.

“You can’t have a trial when you don’t have discovery,” said a furious and flustered Michael Berrigan, deputy chief military defense lawyer, referring to the government’s failure to hand over the needed documents. Berrigan added that the defense still didn’t have the names of all the agents who interrogated Hamdan while he was in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and Guantánamo.

Things began looking up for the defense when the military judge presiding over the trial, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, sanctioned the government for not providing the documents. Not long after, he ruled that he would not permit into the trial statements Hamdan made to interrogators because there was evidence that they were coerced.

However, the government wanted to put Robert McFadden, a special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, on the stand to testify about a March 2003 interrogation of Hamdan. The prosecutor argued that he could provide “clear and convincing evidence” that nothing elicited from that interrogation was coerced.