From Chief Prosecutor To Critic at Guantanamo

He then engaged in a short, subdued rant to Allred about how he believes he is not being afforded human rights and would like to use the bathroom without soldiers watching him. He also tried at one point to get up from the defense table to leave the room. "I refuse participating in this, and I refuse all the lawyers operating on my behalf," Hamdan said. He returned for the afternoon session in traditional Yemeni garb and a sport coat and agreed to continue.

Independent legal experts have criticized the commissions process because its rules allow hearsay or coerced evidence with the approval of a military judge; defendants are barred from using habeas corpus petitions to force a review of their detention; and convictions can be decided by panels of serving military officers without a unanimous verdict, except in capital cases.

Davis's concerns, which he has previously raised with reporters, are more narrow: that the process has been subverted. He told the hearing that he thought Hamdan should be prosecuted for his alleged crimes and he said he "never had any doubts about Mr. Hamdan's guilt."

But he said that top military officials went around him when he was chief prosecutor, for example, to negotiate plea agreements, and that politicians forced him to press charges against Australian David Hicks even though he would have rather gone after other suspects first. When Hicks struck a secret plea deal that brought his release, Davis said he was not a party to it.

One of Hamdan's civilian attorneys, Joe McMillan, said after the hearing that Davis's testimony "calls into question the impartiality and independence of this court." Ben Wizner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who has been tracking the commissions, said it "laid bare that from the start, this has been a political process and not a legitimate legal system."

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, said Monday that officials declined to comment because the hearings are ongoing.

Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.