Sharon Kelly [Elect to End Torture Campaign Manager, Human Rights First]: "One week before the presidential election, the Guantanamo trials grind slowly on, although this week's trial of Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al-Bahlul, a Yemeni accused of being Osama Bin Laden's media adviser, may very well mark the beginning of the end of proceedings at the facility. Both Senator Obama and Senator McCain have stated a desire to close the detention facility and, while Defense Secretary Gates has said it will remain open through the end of the Bush Administration, recent days have brought dropped charges and another prosecutor resigning in protest.

In a departure from his previous loquaciousness in court, Mr. al-Bahlul has sat mute for the past two days, boycotting his trial. In accordance with the wishes of his client, Mr. al-Bahlul's lawyer, Major David Frakt, has sat silently at the next table as the prosecution has begun to introduce evidence tying Mr. al-Bahlul to a film celebrating the destruction of the U.S.S. Cole and urging others to join Al Qaeda.

In short, the military commissions system which has been almost perversely tone deaf to the impression it conveys to the rest of the world is the forum for the trial of a now-silent propagandist.

A trial, not unlike a propaganda film, tells a story. It is the stringent rules governing trial procedure that allow participants and observers to accept a trial's version of events as coming closer to truth than propaganda. At the trial's conclusion, a jury renders a verdict and, because the process has been fair, the results can be accepted by parties and the public as final.

The ongoing propensity of the Military Commissions to undermine what should be one of its key functions – establishing a record that can be accepted as true and fair – continues with the al-Bahlul trial:

The prosecution team has three members actively involved in the trial. A fourth consults from the gallery. The defense consists of one lawyer, and he is not talking. This striking visual disparity is surely an aim of Mr. al-Bahlul.

Six of the nine members of the jury previously served on the jury which handed down the maximum sentence to David Hicks, the Australian defendant who was subsequently sent back to Australia and released. The exact same person who served as that trial's foreman serves as foreman today. Upon inquiry, this duplication, rather than a cynical attempt to stack the deck in favor of conviction and harsh sentencing, is revealed to be the consequence of rather questionable planning: only four panels of potential jurors are available to hear all of the approximately eighty cases currently pending at Guantanamo. While the Military Commissions Act of 2006 authorizes any commissioned officer on active duty to serve as a member of a military commission, what is likely fewer than one hundred people currently comprise the entire jury pool.

Finally, what almost surely won't be addressed within the frame of this trial at all are the troubling suggestions that Mr. Al-Bahlul was abused in American custody. This allegation surfaced in prosecution e-mails and may have contributed to the resignation of prosecutors. With the defense boycotting, the story of what really happened may never come to light.

So far, there has been nothing in this trial that would have prevented it from being conducted in federal court. As the growing consensus that Guantanamo must close leads to the question of "what next," the hard lessons learned here – from prosecutors resigning in protest to stalled cases – must not be lost in a misguided push to establish a new Guantanamo in the United States. It would compound the injustice here if this trial were merely the end of the beginning."

"Report from Guantanamo" is a regular column written by Human Rights First.