From TalkLeft reader lawyer Terry Kindlon:

While we're complaining about how bizarre and other-worldly the Guantanamo Military Commissions are, we should not fail to give sufficient credit to the powerful, pragmatic advocacy of Major Michael Mori, USMC, David Hicks's appointed counsel. Like Navy Commander Charles Swift, who sacrificed his career to effectively represent his client, Mori, a former enlisted Marine, has fearlessly taken on the United States Government at its worst and he's been routinely spectacular.

(As many TalkLeft readers know, Terry Kindlon of Albany, NY is an outstanding criminal defense lawyer who reads and comments often on TalkLeft about military service. He was a decorated Marine during Vietnam, sustained some injuries, is married to my friend Laurie Shanks, also an outstanding defense lawyer in Albany, and their son Lee, age 30, is a captain in the Marines and a military lawyer who recently returned from Fallujah, where he also served as a Judge Advocate.)

A Guantanamo military tribunal today approved a plea agreement between Australian David Hicks and the military and sentenced him to serve 9 more months, most of which will be served in Australia.

The sentence came at the end of a long day in Guantánamo’s military commission courtroom and followed the deliberations of an eight-member panel of military officers. Having deliberated for two hours, the panel returned at 8 p.m. with a sentence of seven years, the maximum it was permitted to impose under the deal in which Mr. Hicks pleaded guilty on Monday.

But the deal also provided that he actually serve the lesser of nine months or whatever sentence the panel arrived at. The balance of the seven years that could have been imposed is considered suspended.

The agreement for just nine additional months of imprisonment was remarkable for a detainee who, before the plea negotiations, had faced a potential life term and had become an international symbol of many of the 385 detainees here.

What did Hicks have to give up?

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A lawsuit filed by nine former military prisoners against Donald Rumsfeld and military officers has been dismissed on the ground that they are immune from suit when they make decisions about the treatment of prisoners. Here's what the prisoners alleged:

The lawsuit contends the prisoners were beaten, suspended upside down from the ceiling by chains, urinated on, shocked, sexually humiliated, burned, locked inside boxes and subjected to mock executions.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First had argued that Rumsfeld and top military officials disregarded warnings about the abuse and authorized the use of illegal interrogation tactics that violated the constitutional and human rights of prisoners.

Calling the case "lamentable," Judge Thomas Hogan ruled that "authorizing monetary damages remedies against military officials engaged in an active war would invite enemies to use our own federal courts to obstruct the Armed Forces' ability to act decisively and without hesitation." Obstructing the government's illegal behavior isn't such a bad thing, is it? Holding Rumsfeld accountable wouldn't be such a bad thing, either.

The writing was on the wall last night. Australian detainee David Hicks, brought before a military tribunal at Guantanamo today, agreed to plead guilty to one charge of providing material support to terrorists.

The guilty plea is sure to be seen by administration supporters as an affirmation of its efforts to detain and try terrorism suspects here, although the government’s detention policy still faces significant legal and political challenges.

Baloney. The plea is nothing but a sign that David Hicks wanted to be free one day, and this was the only way to assure it.

The ACLU is one of four organizations that have been granted status as human rights observers at the military commission proceedings. Ben Wizner, an ACLU staff attorney will be blogging from Guantanamo here.

Friday, Tony Snow dashed any hopes that Guantanamo would be closed during Bush's presidency.

It's highly unlikely that you can dispense with all those cases between now and the end of the administration," White House spokesman Tony Snow said of about 385 prisoners currently at the Guantanamo facility. Asked directly whether the prison would close before Bush leaves office in January 2009, Snow said, "I doubt it, no."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently advocated the closure of Guantanamo.

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Back in 2002 and 2003, largely due to their relevance to the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui and their captivity in overseas secret prisons where they likely were tortured, I wrote many, many posts about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh.

All of the posts are accessible here:

• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (60 posts)
• Ramzi Binalshibh (53 posts)

In addition to the alleged torture of Khalid, the CIA also kidnapped his young sons and flew them to America to talk. My criticism of that is here. The U.S. gave a denial, but it didn't fit. The Associated Press reported on Khalid's statements to interrogators back in 2003. Here is the summary of Khalid's debriefing introduced at the Moussaoui trial. (Analysis here.)Time Magazine profiled Khalid in 2003. ABC reported on the torture techniques as described by CIA officers. The New York Times reported on the techniques used on Khalid (described here.) In 2004, the Washington Post reported on the conflicts between what Khalid and Binalshibh were telling them.

There are several references in the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's enemy combatant hearing transcript Friday to an al-Jazeera interview. Before their arrests, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh were interviewed by Yosri Fouda, London bureau chief for al-Jazeera.

The interview is listed as part of the evidence against Khalid. Khalid tells the hearing officer he never told the reporter he was the head of al Qaida's military committee. He wanted to call Ramzi Binalshibh as a witness at the hearing to back him up on this. The hearing officer denied the request.

The al-Jazeera interview was described in detail in a September 9, 2002 London Times article by Dominic Kennedy. It's not online that I know of, but is available on Lexis.

"A slip of the tongue by one of Osama bin Laden's top henchmen seems to have betrayed al-Qaeda's most potent secret: its charismatic leader is dead."

"The blunder was made by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has confessed to being the operational mastermind behind the September 11 attacks. He made his mistake while disclosing many of the secrets behind the atrocities, which were plotted in Kandahar, the religious extremist Taleban movement's Afghan spiritual home."

"The target of the fourth, thwarted hijack attack in Washington was Congress, not the White House; the original plan was to crash aircraft into atomic power stations; and the plotters used simple codes to keep in touch by internet, he disclosed. Mr Mohammed was speaking in a propaganda exercise organised by al-Qaeda in time for the first anniversary of September 11."

Bump and Update: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's enemy combatant hearing transcript is here (pdf.) The New York Times analyzes it here.

Update: Binalshibh's hearing transcript is here. Al-Libi's transcript is here.

Binalshibh and al-Libi both declined to attend the hearings. Al-Libi submitted a very interesting and polite letter that was read into the record (page 5 -7) listing his objections.

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The Defense Department today released a 26 page transcript of the Guantanamo hearing of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in which he confesses to planning the 9/11 attacks and many others.

Did Mishal al-Harbi suffer brain damage at Guantanamo because he was beaten in his cell by guards or did he try to hang him himself? The Washington Post tells his story today.

From interviews with many released detainees, a portrait is painted of guards mistreating and withholding the Koran and beating prisoners.

Some of the detainees started refusing to hand over the Koran during searches and went on hunger strikes to protest its mistreatment, Azmi said. They also cursed and screamed at the guards, he said. According to Pentagon transcripts, Mishal once spit at a guard.

It was during this fraught period that Mishal was injured, several days after being transferred to isolation block India, said Hammad Ali, a former detainee from Sudan who was in the same isolation block at the time.

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Say hello to The "Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007" and "Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007."

Introduced last week Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Jane Harman (D-CA) respectively, the bills would restore habeas and other rights to the detainees at Guantanamo.

The ACLU welcomes the bills.

The "Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007" mirrors a bill, S. 185, offered in the Senate by Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This bill would restore habeas corpus for those detained by the American government.

The "Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007" would also reinstate habeas rights and clarify the definition of "enemy combatants." Additionally, it would block the federal government from making up its own rules on torture. The Geneva Conventions have governed American behavior during war for decades. The bill makes clear the federal government must comply with the Conventions, and no one in the federal government - not even the president -- can make up their own rules on torture and abuse.

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Hearings began today for 14 Gitmo detainees to determine if they are enemy combatants. If so, they can be held indefinitely or tried in military tribunals.

Were any bloggers allowed in? Doubtful. Even the Associated Press was excluded.

The military allowed the media to cover previous hearings but this time has adopted more stringent rules, barring anyone without a special security clearance.

How will we know what transpired?

Edited transcripts of the hearings at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba will be released later, Peppler said.

Democracy dies behind closed doors.