Holding up an ad created by the American Civil Liberties Union that ran in the New York Times on Nov. 10 urging Obama to close down Guantánamo, al-Darbi said, “Your Honor, you mention that there will be a new president on January 20 … Mr. Obama has said he would like to close this location and I wish that this would happen in his presidency.”

Col. Pohl ordered that the ad be labeled and entered into the courtroom record as an exhibit. He then adjourned the proceedings and announced that the court would meet again on March 2.

President-elect Barack Obama has long stated that he would shut down the U.S. military detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base when he becomes president next month, and most have assumed that meant he would also put an end to the widely discredited military commissions that the Bush administration set up at “Gitmo” and transfer the cases to U.S. federal courts or military courts-martial. With that in mind, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has instructed his staff to have a blueprint for closing the detention center and the military commissions ready by Jan. 20. Human Rights Watch has been observing the military commissions proceedings since they began more than four years ago, and between Dec. 8 and 15, we were on-site for what were probably the last commission hearings for some of the 17 men the Bush administration has charged with terrorism-related crimes.

But the machinery at Guantánamo grinds on, seemingly oblivious to what lies ahead. Prior to the last spate of hearings, which included proceedings for five detainees charged in the 9/11 attacks, improvements were made to the newly constructed $12 million courtroom, built to try the camp’s so-called high value detainees. Stadium seating was added to the spectators’ gallery. Families of 9/11 victims were flown down to attend the hearings, and a curtain was installed in the tents to shield them from scrutiny. The 100 or so tents erected in Camp Justice, the massive tent city constructed on a former airstrip to house non-governmental organizations, journalists and other visitors to the naval base, were outfitted with telephones (though you could only call from tent to tent, not to the outside world). Someone had bought an iron and a makeup mirror for the women’s NGO tent. Most important, the prosecution and the defense and the judges also continued to behave as if the commissions will go on.

On Dec. 12, lawyers for Omar Khadr appeared in a lower-security courtroom, which sits atop a hill with stunning 360-degree views of the Caribbean, to argue that any statements Khadr made to interrogators should be barred from trial on grounds that he was abused and tortured in U.S. custody. Khadr is a Canadian who is charged with killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan when he was 15, and his trial is set to begin six days after Obama’s inauguration.

The judge, Army Col. Patrick Parrish, heard the arguments and set a date of Jan. 19 for the next pretrial hearing so remaining outstanding issues could be resolved before the Jan. 26 trial date.

Although few believe the incoming Obama administration would begin its presidency by putting a Canadian child soldier on trial before internationally infamous military commissions, no mention was made of Jan. 19 being the day before a new president who is likely to shut down the process takes charge. Nor was there mention of Jan. 19 being Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a national holiday on which U.S. courthouses, federal offices, banks and schools are closed.

When asked at a press conference following the arguments about the conspicuous date for the next hearing, one of the prosecutors, Navy Capt. Keith Petty, replied, “As far as I understand, Martin Luther King stood for peace and justice and justice never takes a vacation.”

Al-Darbi, whose Dec. 15 hearing could well turn out to be the last to have taken place at Guantánamo, is a Saudi accused of trying to procure a boat for a terrorist attack in Yemen. Although the government claims that al-Darbi has strong ties to al-Qaida dating back to 1996, and that he is the brother-in-law of one of the 9/11 hijackers, much of its case rests on 119 statements al-Darbi gave to interrogators after his 2001 arrest in Azerbaijan and subsequent imprisonment in Bagram and Guantánamo. His lawyers are arguing that none of his statements should be permitted into evidence because Al-Darbi was abused and tortured in U.S. custody.

At his hearing, the government sought to introduce into evidence a Pentagon-produced video entitled “The al-Qaeda Plan,” which it analogized with “The Nazi Plan,” a 1945 U.S.-government produced documentary used as evidence in the Nuremberg Trials.

But because “The al-Qaeda Plan” did not contain any footage of the accused, and because it contained footage of the World Trade Center, East African embassy, and USS Cole attacks — none of which the accused is alleged to have had any involvement in — the defense argued that the film was irrelevant. It countered by moving to introduce into evidence the Oscar-winning documentary “Taxi to the Darkside,” which told the story of an Afghan taxi driver named Diliwar who died after interrogations, beatings and prolonged suspension in the air by his arms at the U.S.-run Bagram prison in Afghanistan. Al-Darbi alleges that he was subjected to the same treatment as Diliwar while detained in Bagram.

“We’re not trying to turn the commissions into a film festival,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Tom Pyle, one of al-Darbi’s defense lawyers, “but if they want to issue theirs, we would like to issue ours.”

If the Obama administration shuts down the commissions and transfers the case to a military court-martial or a U.S. federal court, both the prosecution and the defense will have to argue these competing motions all over again. But the judge, Col. Pohl, told both sides they should proceed as if the trial were scheduled to go forward as planned in March.

Before leaving the base on Dec. 17, the other NGO observers and I debated what we should do with the locker of items we had accumulated over the past few months to make our repeated stays at Guantánamo more comfortable — the coffee maker, hair dryer, towels, the assortment of sunscreen and bug spray, the masks and snorkels. (When commissions weren’t in process, we often spent time at the numerous beaches on the base, swimming or snorkeling).

In the end, we decided to pack it all up and bring it home. The government, however, is still proceeding as if there is no question about the future of the military commissions. On Dec. 19, it announced charges against a new suspect, Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi accused of helping to organize the attack on the USS Cole. It also announced that it was dropping charges against another detainee, Abdul Ghani, an Afghan who was accused of planting land mines and other explosive devices against U.S. and coalition troops. But because the charges were dropped without prejudice, the government maintained that it had the option of charging Ghani before the military commissions “at a later date.”

So it came as a shock in mid-September when Vandeveld announced that he was resigning as a prosecutor because he had grave doubts about the integrity of the system he had so vigorously defended.

In the days following his resignation — now testifying, remarkably, for the defense counsel in one of his own cases — Vandeveld said that he went from being a “true believer” in the military commissions to feeling “truly deceived” about them. His deep ethical qualms hinged foremost on the fact that potentially critical evidence had been withheld from the defense by the government.

Vandeveld says he was pressured explicitly by superiors not to talk about his work at Guantánamo. Until now, the details of his story have largely been kept from public view. He maintains that he is not ready to speak at length about his decision to resign, but in several e-mail exchanges with me this week, as well as in a series of recent e-mail exchanges he had with others involved in the military commissions, a picture emerges of a man who struggled through an intense crisis of conscience. When he took action, he was ridiculed and bullied by his bosses for questioning the fairness of the system. The military also subjected Vandeveld to a mental-health evaluation after he decided to resign, perhaps aimed at undercutting his credibility.

Vandeveld’s story reveals the painful struggle of a devoutly religious Catholic who became increasingly disturbed by a process he came to view as fundamentally unjust. Unable to confide in his family and friends because so much of the information in the cases he was working on was classified, he took the unusual step of confiding in his opposing counsel. He also consulted a priest online.

Vandeveld is at least the fourth prosecutor to resign from the highly criticized military commissions, but his account is perhaps the most stark and will surely cast a lasting pall over the process. On Tuesday, the Department of Defense announced that it was dropping charges against five detainees whose cases Vandeveld was prosecuting — though not the controversial case that prompted his resignation.

That case, the one that ultimately provoked Vandeveld’s change of heart, was supposed to be a slam dunk for the government. But as Vandeveld would come to discover, it was plagued by problems.

Mohamed Jawad, a young Afghan who allegedly fought with the Taliban, was accused of throwing a grenade into a vehicle carrying U.S. troops, gravely injuring two of them and their translator. Unlike most of the other men charged before the military commissions, who are accused of seemingly abstract crimes like “providing material support for terrorism,” Jawad was charged with “attempted murder in violation of the law of war.” There were witnesses to the attack and Jawad had reportedly confessed. It was the kind of coldblooded act the government hoped would capture the public’s imagination.

Yet, problems arose in the case as soon as Jawad entered the Guantánamo courtroom last March. To begin with, it turned out that Jawad was only 16 or 17 at the time of his alleged offense. Under both U.S. and international law, he should never have been detained with adults, and he should have been provided educational opportunities, as well as contact with his family. He appeared emotionally distressed, holding his face in his hands and asking why he was at Guantánamo.

His defense counsel, Maj. David Frakt, told the court that Jawad was a homeless, illiterate teenager who had been drugged and forced to fight with Afghan militia, then abused by the United States and transported halfway around the world to Guantánamo where he was imprisoned for five years without charge and was now being used as a guinea pig to test a new system of military justice. He said that Jawad was deeply traumatized by the experience, to the point that he might be incapable of aiding in his defense.

In the beginning, Vandeveld was openly dismissive of the story.

“What you have heard is a series of exaggerations,” Vandeveld told the court. “It’s clear from what you’ve seen here today that he is able to assist in his defense.”

But over the next six months, as more information about the case came to light, Vandeveld began to have misgivings.

Initially Vandeveld did not believe that Jawad was a juvenile at the time of his arrest. Because Jawad did not know his birth date (which is common among Afghan villagers), and had at times given different ages for himself, the United States did not record him as a juvenile. However, in the process of examining Jawad’s prison records, it emerged that Jawad had undergone a bone scan at Guantánamo in 2003, estimating his age to be 18, which would have made him 17 at the time of the alleged crime.

“Jawad should have been segregated from the adult detainees, and some serious attempt made to rehabilitate him,” Vandeveld said in a declaration shortly after his resignation. “I am bothered by the fact that this was not done. I am a resolute Catholic and take as an article of faith that justice is defined as reparative and restorative, and that Christ’s most radical pronouncement — command, if you will — is to love one’s enemies.”

Vandeveld also had not believed that Jawad had been mistreated by his American captors. But once again, evidence obtained in the process of discovery revealed a different story. Frakt asked the government to provide a copy of prison records on detainee movements at Guantánamo. In May, Vandeveld gave Frakt a stack of them.

The records showed that in mid-2003, Jawad had been removed from a Pashto-speaking wing in the detention center and isolated, as well as deprived of comfort items such as books or mail. In September 2003, after prolonged isolation, his mental health deteriorated. Interrogators observed Jawad talking to posters on his wall. Then, on Christmas day 2003, Jawad tried to commit suicide, first by banging his head against the metal structures in his cell, then by hanging himself.

They also showed that during a 14-day period in May 2004 — several months after the suicide attempt — Jawad was moved from cell to cell 112 times, an average of less than every three hours. These movements, which intensified between midnight and 2 a.m., turned out to be part of a sleep deprivation program known in Gitmo parlance as the “frequent flier program.” The goal of the program was to disorient detainees and make them more compliant. The records, however, give no indication that Jawad was interrogated at this time.

Initially, Vandeveld did not realize the prison records showed that Jawad had been subjected to a regime of sleep deprivation — the records consisted of many pages of detainee movements, much of it handwritten. The sleep deprivation was pointed out to him by Frakt, who had carefully scrutinized the records. However, Vandeveld had noticed the detainee’s attempt at “self harm.” Shortly thereafter, he told Frakt that he wanted to broker a plea agreement that would have given Jawad a minimal sentence and some rehabilitation before sending him home to Afghanistan.

In an e-mail exchange with Frakt on May 22, Vandeveld wrote: “If I ever thought this job required me to do anything I considered unethical, I’d be out the door.”

“I appreciate that and I believe you,” Frakt replied. “You may have to take back your comments about Jawad’s complaints being embellished and exaggerated. It looks like he was telling the truth. Did you notice that he tried to commit suicide in 2003?”

“I did notice that saddening episode … which is one of the reasons I am pushing for a plea in this case, and why I wanted to get this information in your hands asap,” Vandeveld replied.

In a subsequent e-mail the same day, Vandeveld wrote, “BTW, I will correct my misstatements on the record the next time we’re in session. I know I am obliged to do so.”

A few days after that exchange, Frakt filed a motion with the court to dismiss the charges against Jawad based on evidence that he had been tortured.

When Vandeveld responded to Frakt’s motion, he argued that although Jawad had suffered some abuse at Guantánamo — an unusual admission by a government prosecutor — the remedy was not to dismiss the charges, but rather to consider the abuse in mitigating the accused’s punishment.

According to Vandeveld, when his superiors saw that he had conceded that Jawad had been abused, they were furious. They reprimanded him and made him withdraw the motion and resubmit it, conceding nothing regarding prisoner torture or abuse.

The new motion he submitted stated: “Jawad … suffered no ill-effects from his alleged sleep deprivation.”

As the summer wore on, Vandeveld began to have more doubts. A series of photographs emerged from the time of Jawad’s arrest: They showed a naked and terrified teenager undergoing a strip search and medical examination.

Then, in late July, Vandeveld stumbled across a report that was sitting on a colleague’s desk about an investigation into the death of an Afghan taxi driver named Diliwar who had been killed in U.S. custody. Investigators had come to Guantánamo to interview detainees who were held in Bagram at the time, and took a statement from Jawad.

In his statement, Jawad said that while at Bagram, he was made to wear a black bag over his head and that he was shackled and forced to stand for prolonged periods of time. If he sat down, guards would beat him, grab him by the throat and stand him up again. At one point, he said, they shackled him to the door so he was incapable of sitting down.

Vandeveld immediately informed Frakt about the report and said he was deeply disturbed by the abuse. Equally disturbing to him was that there seemed to be no system in place to provide such evidence to the defense.

“I am highly concerned, to the point that I believe I can no longer serve as a prosecutor at the Commissions, about the slipshod, uncertain ‘procedure’ for affording defense counsel discovery,” Vandeveld wrote in a statement after his resignation. “One would have thought that after six years since the Commissions had their fitful start, that a functioning law office would have been set up and procedures and policies not only put into effect, but refined.”

Vandeveld also said that he had feared retribution if he was perceived as being too cooperative with the defense. He cited another officer who was perceived to have done so and subsequently received a mediocre Officer Evaluation Report.

“I didn’t express my concerns to Brig. Gen. Hartmann or Col. Morris before asking to be reassigned,” Vandeveld told me by e-mail on Wednesday, “largely because I knew both are highly-indoctrinated ideologues whose likely response would have been to have my security clearance revoked as a punitive and preventative measure. (This concern is not happenstance; I could give examples were I not bound by my clearance itself.) The hostile, dismissive way I’d seen [another concerned officer treated by superiors] was enough for me to conclude my reservations would not be well-met.”

Vandeveld’s fears in this regard had a potentially devastating effect on the fairness of proceedings in Jawad’s case: For example, Vandeveld said he did not provide the defense with information the government had about another suspect in U.S. custody who had confessed to the same crime Jawad is alleged to have committed. Nor did Vandeveld provide the defense with a report by a U.S. government intelligence analyst stating that Jawad may have been forcibly recruited into a militia group that targets young men, sexually abuses them and drugs them before forcing them to engage in violence — a report that appears to have corroborated part of the defense counsel’s case.

By August, Vandeveld was in despair. He had concluded that Jawad was in dire need of rehabilitation and he desperately wanted to broker a deal, but he could not persuade his superiors in the prosecutor’s office.

Unsure of what to do, he consulted a priest online. In an Aug. 5 e-mail to the priest, which was first reported by the Los Angeles Times, Vandeveld wrote: “I am beginning to have grave misgivings about what I am doing, and what we are doing as a country. I no longer want to participate in the system, but I lack the courage to quit. I am married, with four children, and not only will they suffer, I will lose a lot of friends.”

The priest, Father John Dear, known for his social activism, encouraged Vandeveld to quit. “God does not want you to participate in any injustice, and GITMO is so bad, I hope and pray you will quietly, peacefully, prayerfully, just resign, and start your life over,” Dear wrote.

Vandeveld said he still didn’t feel comfortable quitting. “One of the precepts of serving as a soldier is that one ‘never quits,’” he told me. So he instead asked to be reassigned, to Afghanistan.

In the days after consulting with Father Dear, Vandeveld continued to try to broker a plea deal for Jawad. In an e-mail to Frakt, he complained that he had no pull in the prosecutor’s office and that the chief prosecutor, Col. Lawrence Morris, seemed to have personal animus toward Frakt.

In early September, Frakt suggested in an e-mail that Vandeveld write a letter to the Convening Authority of the military commissions detailing his efforts to work out a reasonable pretrial deal for Jawad, and explaining that he was repeatedly overruled.

Vandeveld responded: “Let me think about that some more; I have to consider the impact on my family.” In mid-September, he tendered his resignation.

Reprisal from the prosecutor’s office was swift.

Vandeveld was directed to undergo a psychological evaluation. He was ordered to stay at home and prohibited from coming into his office pending his official release from military service.

“Those in charge of [the Office of Military Commissions] saw my actions as an abrupt volte face, an aberration borne of emotion, and were hence concerned about my mental well-being,” Vandeveld told me. “As I’ve said before, the humiliating experience of undergoing a mental health assessment quickly showed that their concerns were unfounded.”

In what may be an effort to prevent Vandeveld from testifying for the defense — and possibly providing additional damning information about the government’s conduct at Guantánamo — the Pentagon on Tuesday announced that it was dropping charges against five of the detainees whose cases Vandeveld was working on. The prosecutor’s office insisted that the announcement was unrelated to Vandeveld’s allegations and that there were no plans to drop charges against Jawad.

Vandeveld is now back home, with his wife and children in Erie, Pa.

“Now that I’m home in Erie, far removed from DC not only in distance, I’m regaining my bearings and sense of self,” he said by e-mail. “I’ve learned, to my immense surprise and gratitude, that outside the Commissions and military bubble, there are many, many fine people whose views are sincere and supportive. I’ve also heard from my buddies from my time in Iraq, all of them expressing fundamental support — the connection doesn’t get any deeper than that.”

Jawad, meanwhile, remains at Guantánamo, going into his sixth year of confinement. The next hearing for his case is scheduled for Dec. 9.

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.

The judge allowed the government to make its case. Without the jury present, McFadden, square-jawed, calm and with a dry sense of humor, described what he said was a cordial, friendly and “free-flowing” conversation on May 17, 2003, in which Hamdan admitted that he had pledged bayat to bin Laden and that he was carrying missiles to bin Laden when he was captured.

The defense scrambled to show that McFadden’s testimony shouldn’t be admitted by arguing that even though McFadden may not have used coercion, Hamdan had been sexually harassed by a female interrogator and subjected to a program of sleep deprivation in the days prior to McFadden’s interrogation. (The defense provided documents showing this, but they were deemed classified and could not be discussed in open court.) The defense also pointed out that Hamdan had been interrogated by 40 other agents from 12 different agencies, and had not admitted pledging bayat to bin Laden to any of them.

The judge ruled in favor of the prosecution and allowed McFadden to testify. Unfortunately the public will never know Judge Allred’s rationale. In a document that must be embarrassing to even the most staunch defenders of the military commissions, four of the five pages of Allred’s opinion were redacted in a sea of black ink.

In the end, Mohammed said he didn’t want to appear, but he agreed to answer written questions presented to him by Hamdan’s defense team. Mohammed depicted Hamdan as a low-level servant and denied that Hamdan had advance knowledge of or played any role in planning the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“He was not a soldier, he was a driver. His nature was more primitive (Bedouin) person and far from civilization. He was not fit to plan or execute. But he is fit to change trucks’ tires, change oil filters, wash and clean cars, and fasten cargo in pick up trucks. He could tighten bolts, and could select the best car maintenance shop.”

Mohammed’s further comments lent some odd and eerie color to the testimony: “We did not fall from the sky to be an organization and had a base; we are a human organization, not an organization of ghosts. We fight humans not ghosts. We have interests in life … So from the 9/11 operation you need to be practical. It is illogical to think that everyone from Al-Qaeda is a conspirator or a terrorist. Because we have business projects, educations, [sic] and mass media, we could confront you for the eight years consecutively … We are not gangs. On the contrary, we are a realistic organization on earth.”

The prosecution countered that Mohammed’s statements — and those of other al-Qaida members — were not reliable and that the jury should not give them credence.

Some of the most compelling testimony might have come from Special Forces psychologist Col. Morgan Banks — I say “might” because his testimony was classified, so anyone who did not have a top-secret security clearance had to leave the courtroom when Banks took the stand. What he said on the stand remains unknown.

Trial observers asked the court for a redacted transcript of the testimony and Judge Allred requested that of the clerk, but as with the discovery for the defense, it has yet to be produced. As of Tuesday, it was still being reviewed by those responsible for declassification.

However, what we do know from defense counsel is that Banks was in Afghanistan as part of the implementation of a secret interrogation regime based on the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape program (SERE) when Hamdan was held there. The SERE program was also used to advise the military on interrogation techniques at Guantánamo.

Despite the secrecy shrouding Banks’ testimony, Hamdan’s defense team later revealed that Banks testified that Hamdan, apparently under such threat, had begged interrogators not to rape his wife or kill his family, and that in the days when U.S. forces were still on the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the other top al-Qaida leadership in Tora Bora, Hamdan made what was referred to as “a significant offer of cooperation.” The defense said that the United States, not Mr. Hamdan, squandered that offer, and wondered whether Hamdan might have led the U.S. to capture bin Laden himself.

In its closing arguments, the defense reiterated its claim that Hamdan was a lowly driver, a “hired hand,” and did not play any critical role in al-Qaida. Defense counsel emphasized that Hamdan had been a cooperative witness, and had the U.S. not chosen to prosecute him, he might have been extremely useful in the war on terror.

“He’s the guy who drove around the guy who did the planning,” said Joseph McMillan, another of Hamdan’s lawyers. But McMillan added that under the prosecution’s theory of providing material support to terrorism, thousands of people could be tried, including “the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker.”

The jury, it seems, agreed.

For Jackson, there is no question of what precipitated the reversal: He says that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and some of the other accused intimidated his client into rejecting counsel. “It was very clear to me what happened,” Jackson said, noting that al-Hawsawi was visibly shaking during the courtroom encounter. The prisoners had been escorted into the courtroom and briefly appeared to be laughing and joking, seemingly happy to see each other. But upon learning that al-Hawsawi and another of the detainees planned to cooperate with defense counsel, Mohammed glared at them and reportedly said: “What, are you in the American Army now?”

Last week, Judge Ralph H. Kohlmann, the Marine colonel presiding over the proceedings here, held individual hearings with each of the accused to ascertain whether any of the men had somehow been coerced into rejecting counsel and to implore them to change their minds.

The commission rules, in a nod to international fair trial standards, explicitly permit self-representation. Beyond the difficulties any accused criminal would face defending himself without a lawyer, U.S. officials doubtless remain worried that the 9/11 defendants will use their day in court to make grandstanding speeches impugning the U.S. and the Bush administration’s war on terror. If last week’s hearings are any indication of what is to come, the defendants are likely to direct attacks against the military commissions themselves, and not without reason. Given the enormous flaws in the procedures at Guantánamo — particularly the use of coerced and secret evidence — the defendants may not need professional lawyers to show legitimate shortcomings in the process.

Hearings for the five men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks have been problematic from the start. Ramzi Binalshibh, the alleged 20th hijacker, refused to appear before the commission at all. According to his lawyers, he is mentally disturbed and taking a cocktail of psychotropic drugs. Unlike at past hearings in which military extraction teams were sent in to force the detainee to appear in court, Guantánamo officials allowed him to miss the hearing, probably because he is scheduled to have a hearing next month on his mental competency to stand trial.

The four others each appeared individually in the courtroom last week, their military and civilian counsel sitting beside them. Reading from a prepared script in a slow and deliberate voice, Judge Kohlmann asked each of the accused whether or not he had made the decision to represent himself of his own free will.

“Did any of the other accused do anything as a directive to you about the choices you should make about these proceedings?” he questioned.

“Without a doubt, no,” al-Hawsawi responded in his hearing. “Absolutely no.”

Judge Kohlmann asked the question several more times, in different ways. Was there anything that could be perceived as a threat? Are any of the other four men in a position to influence your actions concerning defense counsel?

Again, in each hearing, the detainees answered with a definitive “no.”

Judge Kohlmann spent the better part of each hearing warning the men about the dangers of self-representation. “I think it is unwise to represent yourself and I strongly advise you to accept representation of counsel as is your right under the Military Commissions Act,” he said.

He warned that the accused are facing very serious charges and could be sentenced to death. Legal defense counsel, he instructed, could file legal motions, make objections in the courtroom, cross-examine witnesses, call witnesses to the stand and present material as evidence much better than the defendants could. In addition, he noted that the accused, because they lacked security clearances, would not be given access to classified material before the trial, which could seriously hinder their abilities to represent themselves.

Indeed, from their cells in Guantánamo, it would be virtually impossible for the defendants to adequately defend themselves. (The accused don’t have access to telephones, computers or a law library, and obviously cannot travel to interview witnesses.) The military commission restrictions go well beyond what regular criminal defendants would face representing themselves.

This may be precisely one reason that the accused, perhaps at the behest of Mohammed, are insisting on representing themselves. None of the men seem particularly concerned about winning their case; they have already admitted guilt, and they say they are proud of their acts and would like to be sentenced to death. On their way to so-called martyrdom, they are eager to point out the injustices of Guantánamo. As various reports in Salon and elsewhere have shown, they have ample material to work with, thanks to the Bush administration’s policies at the prison.

At one point in the proceedings, Judge Kohlmann warned: “Self-representation is not a license to abuse the dignity of the courtroom, nor is it a license not to comply with relevant rules of procedure and substantive law.” He added that if any of the accused violated the rules, they would lose their right to self-representation and counsel would be appointed. He seemed to sense what was coming.

At each opportunity they had to speak, the detainees seemed intent on drawing attention to the flaws in the military commissions process. Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, who prefers to go by the name Ammar al-Baluchi and is accused of transferring money to the 9/11 hijackers and helping them buy plane tickets, told the court that although he understood that his lack of experience in law put him at a disadvantage, he didn’t think it would make much of a difference because he rarely got to see his lawyers anyway. Defense counsel are not permitted to speak with their clients by phone and have to fly to Guantánamo and go through extraordinary security procedures to get a meeting with them.

“I do not know what they will do in my absence,” al-Baluchi said, explaining that it was impossible for him to oversee the work of his lawyers from Guantánamo. He added that he had written two letters and a motion to Judge Kohlmann, but that authorities had refused to deliver them to the court. It later emerged that part of the problem was that everything the so-called high-value detainees write is presumptively classified — and that because a “privilege team” responsible for declassifying such documents had not yet been appointed, there was no process in place to deliver material from the accused to the court.

Al-Hawsawi voiced similar complaints. When asked if he understood the disadvantages of representing himself, he answered through the court interpreter, “I understand that you appointed a lawyer for my defense. But they are deprived of some materials … If you do not trust the lawyers, with all respect to the lawyers present, how do you expect me to trust them?”

Walid bin ‘Attash, who is alleged to have helped train several of the hijackers for the 9/11 attacks, focused primarily during his hearing on the lack of access to classified information. “If I am representing myself and I cannot view classified information and there is no lawyer, then who is going to review these documents?” he asked the judge.

Kohlmann explained that he would appoint lawyers as standby counsel and that they would be allowed to review the documents, but that they wouldn’t be able to tell the accused what the documents said.

“I can’t review classified documents because I am not authorized, but the lawyer can?” Bin ‘Attash continued. “The charges are against me. My lawyer is not going to serve any death sentence. I feel I have the right to review these classified documents.”

Judge Kohlmann said that he understood the argument, but that under the rules of the military commissions, Bin ‘Attash did not have that right.

“As a judge appointed by the American government … do you think this is a just trial?” Bin ‘Attash pressed.

Judge Kohlmann said he would not discuss his personal opinions and asked if Bin ‘Attash still wished to represent himself. At one point, government prosecutors said they planned to make as much of the classified evidence as possible available to the accused to review in planning his defense, noting that they had already turned over more than 7,000 pages of documents. Bin ‘Attash said he welcomed that gesture, but that the documents were all in English and that he needed them to be translated into Arabic.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed also complained about the lack of access to classified materials as well as his treatment by U.S. authorities since his capture. Addressing the judge in English, he made a point strikingly similar to the one made by Bin ‘Attash: “This is a capital case. I could receive the death penalty so it make [sic] no sense that I can’t see classified material.”

The prosecution told the court that it would make sure that the accused was able to look at any of the evidence it planned to introduce into the courtroom before the trial, but that he would not be able to see secret evidence that the prosecution did not plan to introduce into evidence. When asked how much evidence there was, the prosecutor described it as “a lot.”

“I know, it is five years torturing so for sure it will be a lot,” Mohammed said.

Before being transferred to Guantánamo in 2006, Mohammed and his co-defendants were held incommunicado in secret CIA detention for two to three years and government officials have acknowledged that Mohammed was subjected to waterboarding, a form of torture in which the victim is made to believe that he is drowning. In a thinly veiled reference to his treatment, Mohammed asked the judge, “Will we be able to see evidence from early days? When we first been arrested? From March 2003? Or just later?”

Mohammed went on to say that his correspondence with his lawyers had been opened by Guantánamo authorities, that he had not received letters and other documents his lawyers had sent to him over a month ago and that he did not have any legal-size paper. In addition, he said that he had written a motion to the judge, but that apparently the court had not received it.

The judge explained that whether it was for small matters, such as a lack of paper, or big matters, such as the rules of the court, Mohammed would have to file a motion.

Courtroom observers were left to speculate as to how it was possible for the accused to file a motion to receive paper when he did not have any paper with which to file a motion, or when, should he get some paper, there was no procedure for delivering that paper to the court.

“You have from the mundane and the ridiculous to the serious and significant,” said attorney David Nevin, regarding Mohammed’s various assertions. (Nevin would be Mohammed’s civilian defense lawyer if the accused were to accept counsel.) But the circumstances of the commissions, he said, result in an inability for Mohammed to represent himself.

Nonetheless, with the possible exception of al-Hawsawi — who said he had not yet made up his mind about whether to accept counsel or not — all of the accused said that is exactly what they planned to do.

In December, Belbacha reportedly tried to commit suicide and was moved to the mental health facility. He was stripped naked, dressed in a green plastic rip-proof suicide smock, and placed in an individual cell under constant monitoring –Guantánamo’s suicide watch. He says he was given absolutely nothing else in his cell — no toothbrush, no soap, no books, nothing he could somehow use to injure himself.

Each morning a member of the mental health staff reportedly came by and asked the same set of questions: Do you want to hurt yourself? Do you want to hurt anyone else? Are you sleeping well? Are you eating well?

Close to two months later, he apparently had answered all the questions correctly and was moved back to another windowless cell.

More than half of the 270 detainees currently at Guantánamo — including many who are slated for release or transfer — are housed in high-security facilities akin to U.S. “supermax” prisons. They spend all but two hours a day in small cells with no natural light or fresh air. Their meals are slipped through a slot in the door, and they are given little more than a single book and the Koran to occupy their time. Even their limited “recreation” time — which is sometimes provided in the middle of the night — generally takes place in single cell cages so that detainees can’t physically interact with one another. None of these detainees have been allowed visits by family members, and very few have been able to make phone calls home.

As a result, many detainee lawyers say, their clients are suffering from serious and even dangerous mental health problems. Several have tried to commit suicide, some of them multiple times. Others have reported having visions and hearing voices. Some show strong signs of depression and anxiety disorder.

The Department of Defense does not allow any outsiders, including journalists and representatives of nongovernmental organizations, to speak with the detainees at Guantánamo, so it is difficult to get a full picture of the prison conditions and the toll they may be taking on detainee mental health. In addition, the DOD has generally prohibited attorneys from bringing in outside psychiatrists to evaluate the mental health of their clients, forcing attorneys to rely on “proxy” evaluations based on questionnaires the lawyers administer to their clients.

However, in a new report based on interviews with government officials and attorneys for detainees, as well as declassified notes attorneys took in meetings with detainees, Human Rights Watch has pieced together a physical description of the various “camps” at Guantánamo and the inhumane conditions that prevail within them. Titled “Locked Up Alone: Detention Conditions and Mental Health at Guantánamo,” the report also documents the increasingly frequent complaints of mental health deterioration among the more than one dozen detainees profiled in case studies.

Mohammad El Gharani, a young Chadian who was born and raised in Saudi Arabia, was reportedly arrested at a mosque in Karachi, Pakistan, when he was only 15 years old and brought to Guantánamo in early 2002. He was wrongly classified as 25 and held as an adult. (He is now 21.) For the past two years, he has been held in two of Guantánamo’s most restrictive high-security camps.

Gharani’s lawyers say he has tried to commit suicide at least seven times. He has slit his wrist, run repeatedly headfirst into the sides of his cell, and tried to hang himself. On several occasions, he has been put on suicide watch in the mental health unit, given the green suicide smock, and placed in a single cell with no other items other than toilet paper. Each time, he has been moved out of the suicide unit and back into high-security detention.

Often subject to punishment for reported disciplinary problems, El Gharani says he is often left with nothing in his cell other than a mat for sleeping, a Koran and toilet paper. He says that at times even some of the basic items that all detainees are reportedly allowed at all times — including a finger toothbrush and small bar of soap — have been taken away.

He has never been provided any educational or additional recreation opportunities in accordance with his juvenile status at the time of capture. He has never been allowed to speak with — let alone see — any of his family members during his more than six years in U.S. custody. Like the majority of detainees at Guantánamo, he has not been charged with any crime.

A Guantánamo detainee named Walid, a 28-year-old Palestinian (whose lawyers requested that we withhold his last name), was reportedly sold to the United States by the Pakistani security forces, after the U.S. began offering bounties for suspected terrorists. He was among the first arrivals to Guantánamo Bay in early 2002. As of February 2008, he was “approved to leave” by U.S. officials — yet since 2007, he has been held in one of the high-security camps.

Since his arrest, Walid has had very little contact with his family, who thought he was dead until, several years after his initial detention, he was able to send them a postcard. He has not, to his attorney’s knowledge, been able to speak with any of his family members. Since learning of his whereabouts in 2005, his family has been writing to him and has sent him photos, including pictures of nieces and nephews he has never met.

Around 2003 or 2004 he went on a hunger strike for 20 months and was force-fed through intubation. At one point Walid, who is approximately 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighed only 96 pounds.

His attorneys report that they have long been worried about Walid’s mental health, which they believe has been deteriorating over time. They describe him as lethargic, listless and distracted, and took the following notes of his speech:

I love cowboys. I love Indians. I feel like they’re my family … I knew an Indian woman in Gaza — she talked a witch language. I won’t tell you her name because she might send me a witch curse … Tarzan is a lovely person — very polite — he’s my friend, though he doesn’t [know] it. I don’t watch for entertainment but for another reason — a secret — I won’t tell you … I live in heaven, heaven is in my chest. I love Jesus, I want to see him, and all the mermaids around them.

After the U.S. denied Walid’s attorneys’ requests to release Walid’s medical records, and knowing that they would not be allowed to bring in an independent psychiatrist to evaluate him in person, Walid’s attorneys retained Dr. Daryl Matthews, a psychiatrist once hired by the Department of Defense to evaluate the mental health facilities at Guantánamo. They asked Matthews to prepare a questionnaire by which he could do a proxy psychological assessment. From the results of this questionnaire, Matthews concluded that Walid appears to have developed schizophrenia and suffers from delusions, significant anxiety and depression.

In 2001 a group of 18 Uighurs, an ethnic minority from Xinjiang province in western China, was living together in a camp in Afghanistan when the coalition bombing started. They claim that they fled to the Afghan mountains, were led across the border to Pakistan by some other travelers, and were sold to the United States for bounty money. Five other Uighurs also ended up in Guantánamo, possibly sold to the United States as well.

Most of these men have been cleared for release since 2003, yet remain in Guantánamo because they can’t return to China, and neither the United States nor any other country has been willing to take them in. While five of the Uighurs were resettled in Albania in 2005, 16 others remain housed in one of the most draconian facilities in Guantánamo, reportedly because they threw feces and urine at prison guards following a dispute about the Koran in May 2007. But instead of receiving a 30- or 90-day punishment, as is common in U.S. prisons for disruptive behavior, the Uighurs were moved into one of the highest-security, most restrictive parts of the facility — indefinitely.

As of April 2008 — almost a year later — these men were moved to their own wing of the camp, where they are reportedly allowed to keep the meal slots in the door open most of the day, so that they can more easily speak to each other without shouting. Military officials also claim that they are now being granted additional recreation time, including the chance to go into a single recreation pen with another detainee, and that ultimately they will be able to leave their cells during the day and mingle in the common space in the pods.

For now, however, they still spend the majority of their days locked in their totally enclosed, windowless cells, unable to congregate for meals or prayer time, and unable to see each other as they talk through the meal slots.

In April, before being moved to the “Uighur wing,” one of the Uighurs, Huzaifa Parhat, described his daily routine to his attorney, who wrote:

Wake at 4:30 or 5:00. Pray. Go back to sleep. Walk in circles — north, south, east, west — around his 6-by-12 foot cell for an hour. Go back to sleep for another two or more hours. Wake up and read the Koran or look at a magazine (written in a language that he does not understand). Pray. Walk in circles once more. Eat lunch. Pray. Walk in circles. Pray. Walk in circles or look at a magazine (again, in a foreign language). Go back to sleep at 10:00 p.m.

The next day is the same except that the detainee may leave his cell for two hours of recreation in a slightly larger pen or for a shower.

Another Uighur, named Abdusemet, described days on end of doing nothing other than eating, praying, pacing and sitting on his bed.

“I am starting to hear voices, sometimes,” Abdusemet told his attorney, worriedly. “There is no one to talk to all day in my cell and I hear these voices.” He continued: “What did we do? Why do they hate us so much?”

The U.S. government insists that the harsh conditions that exist at Guantánamo are necessary and legitimate. U.S. officials say that many of the detainees held there are sworn enemies of the United States. They note that some of the men have posed difficult and continuing management problems, engaging in misconduct that ranges from throwing “cocktails” of urine and feces at guards, to attempting to stage riots. They point to a recent slew of head-butting incidents, in which detainees have allegedly injured guards.

Indeed, it was after a riot in May 2006 — when detainees attacked guards with improvised weapons, including broken pieces of light bulbs — followed by three suicides the following month, that the military significantly increased security to prevent further disturbances. Detainees’ repeated hunger strikes and suicide attempts, which many outside observers perceive as cries for help, are seen by the military as challenges to its authority.

Still, while security concerns may explain some of the controls at Guantánamo, it’s hard to justify the extent of such extreme isolation. Although officials try to rationalize harsh conditions, it may be that the regime of prolonged, extreme isolation is contributing to the despair and insubordination among even the innocent or unlucky.

Military officials at Guantánamo appear to recognize the need to provide detainees additional stimuli and social opportunities. In March, the Pentagon announced that it would allow detainees to make phone calls home, with an ultimate goal of two phone calls per year. To date, however, only approximately 40 detainees have made phone calls under this new program. Military officials at Guantánamo have also told Human Rights Watch that they plan to make several additional changes in the future, including allowing increased recreation time, providing regular opportunities for detainees to congregate, and instituting additional language classes. No schedule for these improvements, however, has yet been announced.

Continuing to house detainees in single-cell units 22 hours a day with virtually nothing to do all day long and no access to natural light or fresh air is not just cruel but may also be counterproductive. None of the detainees at Guantánamo has yet been convicted of a crime, and many are ultimately likely to be released. Warehousing them in such conditions may have a long-term damaging psychological impact. It could further compound legal problems with attempting to repatriate or bring detainees to justice. (Efforts to put some detainees on trial, as we’ve covered in Salon over the last several weeks, are buckling under the U.S. government’s policies at Guantánamo.) And the ongoing treatment of these detainees over the long term is very likely to breed hatred and resentment of the United States.