American Civil Liberties Union

Tomorrow night is the broadcast premiere of The Oath on PBS at 10 p.m. EDT (check here for local listings). Directed by documentarian Laura Poitras, The Oath tells the story of Nasser al-Bahri (a.k.a. "Abu Jandal"), Osama bin Laden's former bodyguard, and his brother-in-law, Salim Hamdan, one of the three Guantánamo Bay detainees to be convicted under the unlawful military commissions. (ACLU National Security Project staff attorney Ben Wizner attended Hamdan's trial as a human rights observer, and blogged about it here.)

Before Omar Khadr's trial ground to a halt last week, the sentencing hearing of 50-year-old detainee Ibrahim al-Qosi continued apace. Al-Qosi is the first detainee to be convicted in the military commissions under the Obama administration, in a plea deal in which he admitted to being an al Qaeda cook and occasional driver.

During the two days of sentencing hearings, everyone in the room other than the jurors knew that there had been a secret plea agreement capping the actual amount of time al-Qosi will serve at 10 years (two years in addition to the eight he's already served). On Monday, the judge, Lt. Col. Nancy Paul, ruled that this true sentence would be kept secret until the military commissions' Convening Authority approves it, at an unspecified date. The jurors were only given the enumerated charges to which al-Qosi had pled guilty, and had to set a formal sentence based on that information.

Opening statements began in the first trial under Obama's military commisions yesterday, and the prosecution called their first two witnesses against Canadian Omar Khadr. The youngest of Guantanamo's remaining 176 detainees, Khadr was captured in Afghanistan eight years ago, when he was 15 years old.

Khadr is accused of throwing the grenade that killed Delta Force Sgt. Christopher Speer. Sgt. Speer's widow, Tabitha Speer, observed the trial today, dabbing her eyes with a tissue when witnesses described her husband's mortal injury in the firefight that preceded Khadr's capture.

Yesterday, I witnessed history being made here in Guantánamo, as jury selection began today in the first war crimes prosecution of a child soldier since World War II, and the first ever in U.S. history.

Accused of throwing a grenade that killed Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer and participating in a terrorist conspiracy beginning when he was only 10 years old, Khadr literally has grown up at Guantánamo. Now 23, the full beard Khadr has grown since his imprisonment in 2002 obscures the fact that he was only 15 at the time he was shot and captured by U.S. forces.