U.S. military officials confirmed Thursday that a guard at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay last January fired a "non-lethal round" to disperse detainees after one of them sought to climb a fence and others threw rocks at the guard tower.

No one was injured during the incident, which appears to be the first shooting involving rubber bullets in the 11-year history of the Guantanamo facility. Nonetheless, it has fueled claims by defense lawyers – denied by camp officials – that the  detainees have been engaged for weeks in widespread protests, including hunger strikes and refusing to sleep in their cells.

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The conflicting claims about conditions come as the detention facility in Cuba – which began under President George Bush in 2002 – is once again in the spotlight. Congressional Republicans, led by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, on Thursday sharply criticized the Obama administration for flying the recently captured Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Osama bin Laden's son in law, to New York to stand trial in federal court rather than sending him to Guantanamo.

Al-Qaida spokesman and bin Laden son-in-law captured

“When it comes to people like this ... we want them to go to Gitmo to be held in military custody for interrogation purposes," Graham said in a news conference.

But Obama administration officials say they have ruled out sending any more terror suspects to Guantanamo because it would undercut their intention to shut down the facility. On his first full day in office in January 2009, President Barack Obama vowed to close Guantanamo, but he has been blocked from doing so by Congress, leaving most of the 166 detainees remaining there in perpetual limbo – even though at least 55 of them have been publicly cleared for release by an administration task force consisting of U.S. intelligence agencies.

The shooting incident, first reported by the Miami Herald, occurred on the grounds of a new $744,000 soccer and recreation field that was opened last year and touted by base officials as an example of new and more permissive conditions at the facility. The new soccer field was featured in an NBC News report on Guantanamo last June.

Read more at The Isikoff Files

Navy Capt. Robert Durand, chief public affairs spokesman at Guantanamo, told NBC News in an email that on the afternoon of Jan. 2, the incident occurred "after a detainee attempted to climb the fence" in the new recreation field and a "small crowd of detainees began throwing rocks at the guard tower."

"After repeated warnings were ignored, the guard force was forced to employ appropriate crowd-dispersal measures, in accordance with standard operating procedures," Durand wrote.

In response to follow-up questions, Durand said that the measures involved the shooting of a "non-lethal round" consisting of "several small rubber balls with limited ability to penetrate skin and little ability to cause injury." One of these balls "hit a detainee," he added. (During a May 2006 disturbance at Guantanamo, guards fired pepper spray at detainees, Durand said.) 

Information only began to emerge in recent weeks when some of the detainees began informing their lawyers – whose communications with their clients are tightly regulated. One detainee, Bashir al-Marwalah, wrote his New York lawyers in a letter received  Feb. 22: "We are in danger. One of the soldiers fired on one of the brothers a month ago. Before that, they send the emergency forces with M-16 weapons into one of the brothers' cell blocks."

The letter, a copy and translation of which was obtained by NBC News,  further alleged that a copy of the Quran had been "desecrated" during a search the day before and that guards were going from "cell block to cell block" and taking away detainee possessions.

"Now they want to return us to the darkest days under Bush. They said this to us. Please do something." the letter stated. It then concluded: "We asked that this be announced to the media so that people know what the Obama administration is doing to prisoners now. All the brothers are now on a hunger strike in protest of mistreatment and the desecration of the Quran."

The claims in the letter have been echoed in the last few days by lawyers for other detainees , who have said their clients have told them about large-scale  hunger strikes – with some detainees "losing consciousness" and "coughing up blood."  The claims of widespread hunger strikes have been vigorously denied by Guantanamo officials, who say there are now seven who are doing so – about the same number as have for the past year. 

Pardiss Kebriaei, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said she spoke to one of her clients, Ghaleb Al-Bihani, also a Yemeni, by phone this week and he said he has refused food for a month.  "He's dropped 23 pounds, he’s a diabetic, and medical staff have told him his life is in danger," Kebriaei said. 

Kebriaei said her client told her that there is now a "mass hunger strike" in Camp 6 – the largest and most permissive of the camps at Guantanamo – and that all but two detainees are participating. In addition, she said,  the detainees are protesting in other ways – by refusing to sleep in their cells, instead taking their mats outside and sleeping there. The trigger for the protests appears to be new restrictions and more comprehensive searches of cell blocks  imposed by the new camp commander, Rear Adm. John Smith.

Durand, the Guantanamo spokesman, disputed the lawyers' claims across the board.

“In broad terms, what we are seeing is a coordinated effort by detainees and their attorneys to take routine camp events and create a false picture of conditions," he wrote in an email. "Every day, to some degree, there are a few hunger strikers, a few detainees who assault or threaten guards. To describe the current conditions in the camp as 'deteriorating' is patently false."

He added: "Detainees, their attorneys, family members and sympathetic organizations routinely attempt to gain sympathy for detainees in the media by initiating and spreading falsehoods regarding conditions of detention, allegations of abuse by guards, denial of medical treatment, abuse of the Quran and reports of mass unrest or hunger striking. These tactics have been employed off and on since Joint Task Force Guantanamo opened in 2002."

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SANAA, Yemen — Al-Qaida's No. 2 in Yemen died in a U.S. drone attack last year in southern Yemen, the country's official news agency and a security official said Thursday.

Saeed al-Shihri, a Saudi national who fought in Afghanistan and spent six years in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, was wounded in a missile attack in the southern city of Saada on Oct. 28, according to SABA news agency.

---

The agency said that he had fallen into a coma since then. It was not clear when he actually died.

A security official said that the missile had been fired by a U.S.-operated, unmanned drone aircraft. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Yemen had previously announced al-Shihri's death in a Sept. 10 drone attack in the province of Hadramawt. A subsequent DNA test however proved that the body recovered was not that of al-Shihri.

On Oct. 22, al-Shihri denied his own death in audio message posted on Jihadi websites.

Also known by the nom de guerre Abu Sufyan al-Azdi, he denounced at the time the Yemeni government for spreading the "rumor about my death ... as though the killing of the mujahideen (holy warriors) by America is a victory to Islam and Muslims."

Al-Shihri went through Saudi Arabia's famous "rehabilitation" institutes after he returned to his home country, but then he fled to Yemen and became deputy to Nasser al-Wahishi, the leader of an al-Qaida group.

Al-Shihri's death is considered a major blow to al-Qaida's Yemen branch, known as al-Qaida in The Arabian Peninsula. Washington considers it the most dangerous of the group's offshoots.

Al-Qaida in Yemen has been linked to several attempted attacks on U.S. targets, including the foiled Christmas Day 2009 bombing of an airliner over Detroit and explosives-laden parcels intercepted aboard cargo flights last year.

In 2011, a high-profile U.S. drone strike killed U.S.-born Anwar al-Awlaki, who had been linked to the planning and execution of several attacks targeting U.S. and Western interests, including the attempt to down a Detroit-bound airliner in 2009 and the plot to bomb cargo planes in 2010.

Yemen, the Arab world's poorest nation, has fallen into lawlessness since the start of an uprising in 2011, when millions of Yemenis took to the streets demanding the ouster of their longtime authoritarian ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Al-Qaida militants exploited the unrest and took control of large swaths of land in the south until last spring, when the military, backed by the U.S., managed to drive hundreds of militants out of major cities and towns.

Since then, the group has carried out deadly attacks targeting mostly security and military officials, including suicide bombings that targeted military and security compounds.

Related: 

UN to investigate legality of drone killings

 

The WikiLeaks website began publishing on Thursday what it said were more than 100 U.S. Defense Department files detailing military detention policies in camps in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay in the years after the September 11 attacks on U.S. targets.

In a statement, WikiLeaks criticized regulations it said had led to abuse and impunity and urged human rights activists to use the documents, to be released over the next month, to research what it called "policies of unaccountability."

The statement quoted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as saying: "The 'Detainee Policies' show the anatomy of the beast that is post-9/11 detention, the carving out of a dark space where law and rights do not apply, where persons can be detained without a trace at the convenience of the U.S. Department of Defense."

"It shows the excesses of the early days of war against an unknown 'enemy' and how these policies matured and evolved," it said, and led to "the permanent state of exception that the United States now finds itself in, a decade later."

---

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in London said it had no immediate comment.

In January, U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said the United States was still flouting international law at Guantanamo Bay by arbitrarily and indefinitely detaining individuals.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in 2001 when militants from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers in New York, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

Then President George W. Bush set up a detention camp at a U.S. naval base at Guantanamo in Cuba after U.S.-led forces invaded Afghanistan to expel al-Qaida following the September 11 raids. Of the 779 men held there, 167 remained as of mid-September 2012.

Interrogation
WikiLeaks said a number of documents it was releasing related to interrogation of detainees, and these showed direct physical violence was prohibited.

But it added the documents showed "a formal policy of terrorizing detainees during interrogations, combined with a policy of destroying interrogation recordings, has led to abuse and impunity".

A number of what can only be described as "policies of unaccountability" would also be released, it said.

One such document was a 2005 document "Policy on Assigning Detainee Internment Serial Numbers," it said.

"This document is concerned with discreetly 'disappearing' detainees into the custody of other U.S. government agencies while keeping their names out of U.S. military central records — by systematically holding off from assigning a prisoner record number," the WikiLeaks statement said.

WikiLeaks did not elaborate. But human rights activists say that after the September 11 attacks, the Central Intelligence Agency used "black sites" in friendly countries to interrogate and sometimes torture suspected militants beyond the reach of normal legal protections.

Playing on 'love' and 'fear'
While Bush acknowledged the existence of a CIA program for detaining and questioning militants outside of the United States in speech in September 2006, the government has never publicly confirmed the location of the sites.

Some of the policies applied to other countries' personnel, Wikileaks said, citing what it said was a 13-page interrogation policy document from 2005 for U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq.

It said the document detailed techniques such as the "Emotional Love Approach: Playing on the love a detained person has for family, homeland or comrades". In contrast, in the "Fear Up (Harsh)" approach, it said "the interrogator behaves in an overpowering manner with a loud and threatening voice in order to convince the source he does indeed have something to fear; that he has no option but to co-operate."

The documents released on Thursday date from 2001 to 2004.

Assange, whose website previously angered the United States by releasing thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables, has been holed up inside Ecuador's embassy in central London since June to avoid extradition to Sweden to face rape and sexual assault allegations. He denies wrongdoing.

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A week of hearings at a military court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba made slow headway towards a trial of five men accused of orchestrating the 9-11 terror attacks on the United States, ending Friday with few rulings on two dozen pretrial motions. 

On the final day of hearings none of the five accused men came to court, all opting to stay behind in their prison cells.

Army Col. Judge James Pohl heard several more hours of arguments on the issue of a gag order that prohibits any talk about the interrogations that the men were subjected to at secret CIA prison sites prior to their tranfer to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.  

The judge will likely issue a written decision on whether the defendants' memories of the events are in fact classified, as the protective order now states.

---

Judge Pohl did not rule on the other interesting motion discussed Friday — one that the Judge nicknamed "The C-SPAN Issue." The defense teams have requested that the trial be open to public television so the world can see the proceedings.

The defense argues that opening the trial to the public is necessary to prevent the appearance of an unfair trial.

The judge challenged that idea, arguing that by that logic every accused person in federal court cannot get a fair trial because it's not televised. He added that trials are not open to cameras in the military system either.

This case is different, defense attorney Marine Major William Hennessy argued.

Pohl countered by asking whether he should conclude that the lack of public television means that an accused person is not getting a fair trial.

"Yes, sir," Hennessy replied.

A prosecution attorney disagreed, saying that the First Amendment right to public access is not absolute, and that opening the trial to television cameras compromises the security of the trial participants.

Earlier in the week, self-professed mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was granted an opportunity for a brief airing of his views of the proceedings.

Wearing a camoflage vest over his traditional robes Mohammed condemned what he called prosecutors "elastic" use of national security to justify its actions.

"The government uses national security as it chooses," the Arabic-speaking Mohammed said through a translator while seated at a defense table. "Many can kill people under the name of national security and torture people in the name of national security."

Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators are accused of planning and providing logistical support for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks by hijackers who crashed planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.

If convicted they could face the death penalty, but the trial is many months away.

Pohl set the next motions hearings for Dec. 3-7, putting the attorneys on notice that they should plan to set aside at least one week, every other month.

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The judge in overseeing proceedings against the five men who allegedly orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks allowed what he said was a one-time only opportunity for the key defendant, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to air his views on Wednesday.

In the divergence from ongoing pre-trial proceedings aimed at laying the ground rules for a trial at a U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba came in the third of five scheduled days of hearings.

---

A transcript of Mohammed’s remarks, translated from Arabic, offer a window into the thinking of the 47-year-old Kuwaiti-born militant, who has been detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba since 2006. Before that he was detained in secret CIA facilities and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques, including dozens of sessions of "waterboarding":

Yes. In the name of God, most graceful, the government at the end of the argument gave you an advice. They told you any decision you're going to issue you have to keep in mind the national security and to remember that there were 3,000 people killed on September 11. And I would like to give you a similar advice.

Any decision you will take, you have to keep in mind that the government, that the government is using the definition of national security as it chooses. And this expression has a definition in the Military Commission's Rules.

We have heard the expression of national security again yesterday and today about tens of times. And everyone use this expression as he or she chooses. But legislators and legal people who deal in the legal field, they have to differentiate between the politicians' use of this word and the legal people's use of this word.

When the government feels sad for the death or killing of 3,000 people who were killed on September 11, we also should feel sorry that the American government, who is represented by General Martins and others, (has) killed thousands of people—millions.

This definition is a resilient definition, lasting. Every dictator can put on this definition as they choose, as he chooses to step on every definition in this world, every person, and every law and every constitution.

With this definitions, many can evade the rule and also can go against it. Many can kill people under the name of national security and to torture people under the name of national security and to detain children under the name of national security, underage children.

I don't want to be long, but I can say that the president can take someone and throw him in the sea under the name of national security. And so—well, he can also legislate the killings, assassinations under the name of national security, (of) American citizens.

My only advice to you, that you do not get affected by the crocodile tears. Because your blood is not made of gold and ours is made out of water. We are all human beings. Thank you.

 

The judge, Army Col. James Pohl, did not interrupt the speech, but made it clear that the speech was a one-time opportunity in the proceedings.

"Okay," said Pohl, addressing civil defense attorney David Nevin. "Just I think we need to make something clear here, is that I didn't interrupt Mr. Mohammed. He requested to make a statement to the court. But this is a one-time occurrence. If accused wish to represent themselves as attorneys, that's one issue. But no matter how heart-felt, I'm not going to again entertain personal comments of any accused about the way things are going. Do you understand what I'm saying, Mr. Nevin?"

"I understand," Nevin responded.

"I'm not pointing a finger," Pohl continued. "I want to make it very clear, I didn't interrupt him on this, but it is clear this was his personal statement of what he thought. Although he has the right to have that opinion he does not have the right to voice that opinion or any accused to stop the proceedings to give his personal observations and comments. I just want to make it clear the fact that I did not interrupt and let him finish should not be interpreted that this is an acceptable procedure of this Commission.

Mohammed and his accused co-conspirators are accused of terrorism and murder in the attacks, which killed 2,976 people. Mohammed has previously said that he was behind Sept. 11 and other terror attacks, and personally beheaded American journalist Daniel Pearl in February 2002 after the reporter was abducted in Pakistan.

The court's hearing on arguments on some two dozen motions, mainly involving secrecy and prisoner's rights, continued Thursday and were scheduled to run through Friday.

NBC News' Courtney Kube and Kari Huus contributed to this report.

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The military tribunal of 9/11 terrorism suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-conspirators resumed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba on Tuesday, plunged into arguments over one of the thorniest subjects that the court must iron out before the trial — whether the suspects can talk about their detention and harsh interrogation in secret CIA prisons prior to their transfer to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.

The men are accused of planning and providing logistical support for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks by hijackers who crashed planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.

Mohammed and the other four who are portrayed as his underlings face charges that include terrorism and murder, and they could be sentenced to death if convicted.

This week’s proceedings hear arguments on 25 pretrial motions dealing mainly with privacy issues and the detainees' rights, and set the ground rules for the trial which is likely at least a year away.

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Prosecutors have asked the judge to approve what is known as a protective order intended to prevent the release of classified information during trial.

The gag order prohibits mention of what the defendants experienced or learned during their interrogation because the tactics used on them were classified.

The defense argued that the government gave up the right to keep interrogation tactics classified when they exposed the defendants to the process.

They mainly object to one portion of the order, which says that, "Any statements made by the accused are presumptively Classified Information." The defense teams believe that that is too broad a statement, and that there is no such thing as "presumptive classification" — that information is classified or not.

The judge, Army Col. James Pohl, pushed back on their argument, saying that both sides agree with the definition of what is classified and what is not, and that the attorneys are required not to disclose new information they deem could be classified.

"We're not talking about what you had for lunch today," Pohl said.

But an attorney for Ramzi Binalshibh argued that issues just that mundane do become a hindrance, citing an example from defending another detainee.

After several hours of arguments against the protective order, the judge did not rule on the motion to strike the gag order Tuesday.

First Amendment appeal
Instead, Pohl moved on to hear arguments from First Amendment attorney David Schulz, on behalf of 14 U.S. news organizations seeking to report on legal proceedings at Guantanamo — classified information or not. 

Schulz argued that the gag order should be lifted because the information about what happened to the defendants during their interrogations has been widely reported in the media.

"The New York Times is not a classification authority," Pohl shot back, saying that just because something is reported in the news or widely known doesn't mean it's now unclassified.

Schulz argued that the use of the 40-second delay switch also violates the First Amendment, but Pohl dismissed that, as well, saying that the switch can prevent the release of classified information that is inadvertently disclosed.

ACLU attorney Hina Shamsi was next to argue for more open proceedings, saying that when issues such as rendition and torture are under discussion, the public has a right to know about it.

Shamsi added that the public should be able to determine for themselves whether punishment is justified, the decide on the lawfulness of government actions with the defendants, and the overall fairness and legitimacy of these proceedings.

The judge stopped her there, saying the court would recess for the day to respect the defendants right to afternoon prayers.

The court will take up this argument again at 9am Wednesday, when the ACLU attorney will continue her arguments.

Last minute boycott
All five of the men were at Monday’s hearings, but on Tuesday, Mohammed, Saudi defendant Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi and Pakistani national Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali all bowed out. Walid Bin Attash and Ramzi Binalshibh, both from Yemen, did attend.

Mohammed, who has previously claimed he was the mastermind of the terrorist attacks, was taken from his cell at the U.S. base in Cuba to a holding cell outside the courtroom, then chose to boycott at the last minute, said a Navy officer whose name was not released by the court for security reasons.

He did not give a reason for sitting out the Tuesday hearing, but on Monday he dismissed the military tribunal with scorn, saying "I don't think there is any justice in this court."

Pohlruled Monday that the defendants have the right to be absent from this week's pretrial hearings, but said they would have to attend the trial.

The chief prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, had argued that the rules for the special war-time tribunals known as military commissions required the defendants to attend all sessions of the court.

But lawyers for the men disagreed, arguing that the threat of being forcibly removed from their cells would be psychologically damaging for men who had been brutalized while held during their captivity by the CIA.

Read more on Monday's hearing

The U.S. government has acknowledged that the defendants were subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" which in some cases included the simulated drowning method known as waterboarding.

"Our clients may believe that ... 'I don't want to be subjected to this procedure that transports me here, brings up memories, brings up emotions of things that happened to me,'" said Jim Harrington, who represents Binalshibh.

Harrington's statement elicited groans from a small group of family members of Sept. 11 victims who were chosen by lottery to view the proceedings at Guantanamo.  A few other families watched the proceedings on closed-circuit TV from U.S. military bases in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Maryland.

Defendant dress code
Also on Tuesday, the court dealt with what the detainees are allowed to wear in court.

The attorney for Mohammed, U.S. Army Capt. Jason Wright, explained that his client wants to wear a military-style camouflage vest over his traditional attire. He argued that Mohammad wore military-style clothing when fighting against the Soviets for the U.S. government in Afghanistan, so he has a right to do so in this courtroom, as well. Not allowing him to wear it undermines his presumption of innocence, the attorney argued.

Pohl said that the defendants would not be permitted to come into court in a complete U.S. Army uniform, but, he would not forbid all camouflage.

The five men were arraigned in May, and subsequent hearings were pushed back for various reasons.

A hearing in July was postponed to allow the defendants to observe the holy month of Ramadan. Hearings in August were delayed when an Internet outage left the lawyers unable to access their electronic legal documents. That hearing was later canceled altogether as Tropical Storm Isaac approached.

A hearing scheduled for late September was also delayed because the work space for the defense lawyers was shut down due to a rat infestation and mold, which lawyers claimed were making them sick, Reuters reported.

Pohl ruled on Oct. 5 there would be no further postponements to the hearings.

An earlier attempt to try the five men at Guantanamo ended when the Obama administration tried to move the trials to New York City, where two of the hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center.

That was abandoned under pressure from Congress and from New Yorkers, and the charges were re-filed in Guantanamo.

NBC News' Kari Huus and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Updated at 5:20 p.m. ET: The self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, which resulted in the deaths of 2,976 people, appeared before a military judge at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba on Monday after months of delays due to scheduling conflicts, religious observances, an Internet outage and a tropical storm.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed shocked some observers by appearing with a long, full beard that had been dyed bright reddish-orange. He appeared before Judge Army Col. James Pohl for the start of a week of pretrial hearings, along with co-defendants Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, a Pakistani; Mustafa Al Hawsawi, a Saudi; and Walid Bin Attash and Ramzi Binalshibh, two men from Yemen.

Unlike their last appearance in court in May, which was disrupted several times by the defendants, the five men sat quietly at the defense table, under the watchful eyes of military guards and several family members of the 9/11 victims, The Associated Press reported. All seemed to be cooperating with their attorneys. Mohammed read legal papers. Two others responded politely to the judge when they were asked questions, according to the AP.

All the defendants wore white robes and turbans, and spoke openly with one another throughout the course of the day.

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The men, being prosecuted in a special military tribunal for war-time offenses, are charged with conspiring with al-Qaida, attacking civilians and civilian targets, murder in violation of the laws of war, destruction of property, hijacking and terrorism. All five could face the death penalty if convicted.

The families of people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks were invited to military installations in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland and New York City to watch the pretrial hearings on closed-circuit television, NBCNewYork.com reported.

Getting the terror suspects to this point has been a years-long process mired in political and legal arguments over the defendants' rights, the use of evidence that may have been derived through torture, and the proper venue for the proceedings. The actual trial is expected to be at least a year away.

The pretrial hearings this week will cover a series of motions filed by the various defense teams, dealing primarily with secrecy issues and the detainees' rights.

The most controversial issue, which was not taken up by the end of the first day, is a challenge to the government's gag order on any information gained during interrogation of the detainees. The ACLU and more than one dozen news organizations filed a motion to oppose to government's gag order. The government maintains the order is necessary to protect classified intelligence-gathering techniques.

Defendants may skip hearings
On Monday, prosecutors and lawyers spent hours arguing the most preliminary of issues, including whether the defendants have to be in court at all, with one attorney saying the hearings may dredge up bad memories of their harsh treatment in CIA detention.

Defense attorney Capt. Michael Schwartz argued that the detainees should not be forced to come to court because the process of forcibly removing them from their cells is traumatic and reminiscent of harsh interrogation techniques.

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Schwartz said that if the court was considering forced cell extraction it had to talk about torture.

"No we don't," the judge said quickly.

"I think we do," Schwartz said.

"I'm telling you I don't think that's relevant in this issue. That's the end of that, move on to something else," Pohl retorted.

But Schwartz persisted, saying he needs to address the issue of torture.

"No you don't," the judge said more forcefully this time, adding that the defense does not have the opportunity to make an argument that he sees as irrelevant.

After a prolonged and heated back-and-forth, the detainees were granted the right to waive their attendence at the hearings at least until jurors are assembled for the actual trial, but they must sign a waiver each day they choose not to attend.

Toward the end of the day, the judge asked each of the five detainees a series of questions to ensure they understand their new rights to waive attendance at their sessions.

Binalshibh answered each of his questions in imperfect English, veering into a perplexing discussion about escaping from Guantanamo and alleging unfair treatment from his guards.

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When asked whether he understands that the trial could ultimately continue even if he is not present, Binalshibh looked perplexed, saying, "that is a very wide word, can you be concrete?"

"I'm not implying that I think you are going to escape," the judge said, adding that if that were to happen, the trial could continue without him being there.

"Escaping from custody?" Binalshibh asked.

"I'm not saying you're going to," the judge said, asking again whether he understands that the trial could continue without him. Binalshibh seemed to smile as he said, "Yes I do."

Guantamo guards make things 'difficult'
He raised concerns about the fact that guards would be sent to bring him to the hearings, though, saying, "dealing with the guard is very difficult. They didn't report everything so correctly. Problems with guards can misreporting all things."

"Some guard when you have problem with them they can make it very difficult for us," he said.

When the judge recommended reporting any problems to his attorney, Binalshibh said, "Where can I call him? There is no time to contact him. Very difficult communication for us."

Mohammed answered his questions through his interpreter. He looked down and answered simply "yes" to every question, until at the end when asked whether he understands he doesn't have to attend the sessions.

"Yes, but I don't think there is any justice in this court," he said through his interpreter.

The court was in session for about five total hours, with several breaks throughout the day. It then adjourned until 9 a.m. ET. Tuesday.

Pohl was also expected to hear requests from news organizations on limiting closed courtrooms for secret sessions and be asked to decide whether the U.S. Constitution governs tribunals held at the U.S. base in Cuba.

The testy exchanges occurred during a hearing that was otherwise calm and orderly, in stark contrast to the chaotic 13-hour arraignment hearing in May, when defendants made defiant outbursts and refused to answer the judge's questions or listen through earphones to an Arabic-English translation of the proceedings. In those proceedings, one of the men was briefly restrained and two of them stood up to pray at one point.

Subsequent hearings had been pushed back for various reasons.

A hearing in July was postponed to allow the defendants to observe the holy month of Ramadan. Hearings in August were delayed when an Internet outage left the lawyers unable to access their electronic legal documents. That hearing was later canceled altogether as Tropical Storm Isaac approached. The storm caused no damage to the base.

A hearing scheduled for late September was also delayed because the work space for the defense lawyers was shut down due to a rat infestation and mold, which lawyers claimed were making them sick, Reuters reported.

Pohl ruled on Oct. 5 there would be no further postponements to the hearings.

An earlier attempt to try the five men at Guantanamo ended when the Obama administration tried to move the trials to New York City, where two of the hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center.

That was abandoned under pressure from Congress and from New Yorkers, and the charges were re-filed in Guantanamo.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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A Guantanamo detainee who died Saturday was a former hunger striker who had recently been placed in a disciplinary cell after splashing a guard with a "cocktail"-- typically containing urine, a U.S. military official tells NBC News. 

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is investigating the death of the detainee, whose identity and country of origin will not be released until his family is notified, said Navy Capt. Robert Durand, a spokesman for the U.S. detention facility.

But Durand provided some new details about the detainee's death -- the ninth to occur at Guantanamo since the prison opened in early 2002 and the first since an Afghan prisoner committed suicide in May of last year.

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The detainee was found unconscious in his cell in Camp 5 on Saturday afternoon and was taken to the Naval hospital at Guantanamo where efforts to revive him failed. There were no cuts on his wrist or any other obvious signs of self-inflicted wounds, Durand said.

The detainee also had no serious medical problems. He had participated in a hunger strike last spring but ended it in June and was examined as recently as Aug. 22 when he was at 95 percent of his body weight, Durand said.

He had "fairly recently" thrown the "cocktail" at a prison guard, causing him to be placed in a solitary cell at Camp 5, said Durand. 

Although the death occurred on Saturday, military officials did not announce it until Monday in order to give officials time to notify the host country and family members of the detainee. That process has not yet been completed, but officials decided to release some details Monday because of concerns that some visitors to the base-- such as defense lawyers -- would learn about it anyway, Durand said. 

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The Miami Herald reported that a pathology and mortuary team was brought to the base on Sunday to attend to the body. A Muslim imam was summoned in order to give the man Islamic rites.

The dead man’s remains will be returned home after an autopsy, the Navy said.

The detention camp was set up to hold non-American captives suspected of involvement with al-Qaida, the Taliban or other Islamic militant groups after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Of the 779 men held there, 167 remain.

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Two of the earlier deaths were from natural causes and six were designated as suicides, most of them by hanging.

NBC News staff and Reuters also contributed to this report.

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"The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," the popular 1990s sitcom starring Will Smith, has supplanted Harry Potter books as a popular way for detainees at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay to pass the time, according to a newspaper report.

The Miami Herald reported demand among the 168 prisoners for J.K. Rowling's popular literary series about a boy wizard had fallen. But interest has surged in the TV series about Smith's street-savvy, wise-cracking character from West Philadelphia who tries to adjust to life with his affluent cousins in Southern California.

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"I just ordered all six seasons," the Herald quoted a librarian named only as Milton as saying.

"They're over that (Harry Potter); it's been more than a year," the librarian, who the paper said was a civilian contractor for the Defense Department, told the Herald.

The newspaper said the detention center had a multilingual collection of about 28,000 books and videos in Arabic, Pashto, English, French and other languages.

How I see America, from a former Gitmo prisoner

Many detainees apparently use the library's collection to help improve their English, the Herald said. The inmates appeared to favor reading novels that feature side-by-side translation, the newspaper said, and at least 10 copies of the Oxford English Dictionary had been ordered for the prisoners.

Rewards and incentives
The books and videos are used as incentives and rewards for good behavior, and to give detainees a way to pass the time.

Soccer, cable TV at Gitmo? US lockup in Cuba quietly being upgraded

"The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" first aired on NBC on Sept. 10, 1990, and ran for six seasons.

According to the Herald, cooperative prisoners, who make up the majority of the detainees, can watch the show communally on flat-screen televisions bolted to the walls inside a plexiglass box almost around-the-clock.

UK cops to probe 'allegations of complicity to torture' prisoner at Gitmo

Detainees who are classified as maximum-security captives -- about 15 percent of the population -- are allowed to watch the show alone for up to an hour or two a day, the newspaper reported. A maximum-security detainee is given a solo cell and a recliner, from where he can view the show with one ankle shackled to a bolt in the floor, the Herald said.

The prisoners held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay are from various countries around the world. Many of them were captured more than a decade ago after U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in an effort to break up the al-Qaida terrorist network and its Taliban protectors following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The United States accuses the detainees of links to terrorism.

According to the Herald, past librarians at Guantanamo Bay have reported prisoner interest in President Barack Obama's political memoir, "The Audacity of Hope," and one attorney suggested to a convict that he read former President George W. Bush's "Decision Points."

Point of friction
The prison facility has been a major point of friction between the United States and the Muslim world.

Allegations of torture have been common. A documentary by Doha-based broadcaster Al-Jazeera earlier this year said that children’s songs from the "Sesame Street" TV series had been used to "torture" detainees.

'I wake up screaming': A Guantanamo nightmare

Books by former Guantanamo interrogators, including ex-FBI agent Ali Soufan's "Black Banners" and former CIA agent Jose Rodriguez's "Hard Measures," have yet to be included in the library's collection, the Herald said.

Several former detainees at Guantanamo Bay, including Briton Moazzam Begg and Australian David Hicks, have written books about their experiences there, but it was unclear whether their books were available at the site's library.

Defense lawyers say Guantanamo court rigged to deliver death sentence

Obama campaigned for president in 2008 partly on a pledge that he would close the Guantanamo prison facility, but his failure so far to do so has earned the enmity of human-rights activists.

Nearly 800 detainees have been held at Guantanamo since the prison opened a decade ago, according to reports.

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LONDON -- British police will examine allegations that U.K. intelligence officials were complicit in the alleged torture of a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay.

It could lead British detectives to ask the U.S. government for permission to interview Shaker Aamer at the detention center in Cuba.

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Aamer's case is one of three that are to be considered by detectives with London's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). The investigations are understood to include allegations against officials with Britain's MI6 and MI5 intelligence services. 

The decision was made by a joint Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Metropolitan Police panel. Earlier this year, the panel decided detectives should investigate claims of British involvement in the ill treatment of two Libyan men and their families.

How I see America, from a former Gitmo prisoner

Aamer is the last remaining British national held at Guantanamo Bay. He says that he has been subjected to torture including sleep deprivation, stress positions and other forms of mistreatment.

The allegation is that British officials visited him, or asked questions, while aware of his treatment.

More UK coverage from NBC partner ITV News

Aamer is a Saudi Arabian citizen but is a legal permanent resident of the U.K. He is married to a British woman with four children living in London.

He was arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 and taken to Guantanamo Bay, he has never been put on trial there. He has long been cleared for release, according to the charity Reprieve.

His U.S.-based lawyer Cori Crider told NBC News: "This is a positive development. What has happened to Shaker was appalling and we look forward to cooperating with the police."

'Tortured' Gitmo prisoner seeks release of secret videos

In a statement, the Crown Prosecution Service said: "On January 12, 2012, the DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions] announced that a joint CPS and MPS scoping panel would convene to assess a number of allegations of complicity to torture made against British officials.

"The panel has now had the opportunity to sit and, having assessed 12 cases, it has referred three to the MPS to consider further investigation. The MPS has decided to undertake further investigation into these three cases.

"Legal representatives for those making the allegations are aware of the panel's assessments and officers from the MPS are seeking, where possible, to meet with those that have made allegations in order to explain the individual decisions."

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Updated at 11:57 a.m. ET: GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- The U.S. has finally started the prosecution of five Guantanamo Bay prisoners charged in the Sept. 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, but the trial won't be starting anytime soon, and both sides said Sunday that the case could continue for years.

Defense lawyer James Connell said a tentative trial date of May 2013 is a "placeholder" until a true date can be set for the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the attacks, and his co-defendants.

"It's going to take time," said the chief prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, who said he expects to battle a barrage of defense motions before the case goes to trial.

---

"I am getting ready for hundreds of motions because we want them to shoot everything they can shoot at us," he said in the wake of Saturday's arraignment, which dragged on for 13 hours due to stalling tactics by the defendants.

"Everyone is frustrated by the delay," Martins said. He noted that the civilian trial of convicted Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui took four years, and he pleaded guilty in 2006 before being sentenced to life in prison.

On Saturday, Mohammed and his co-defendants refused to respond to the judge or use the court's translation system and demanded a lengthy reading of the charges. One of them got up and started praying.

Connell called the tactics "peaceful resistance to an unjust system."

The arraignment, Connell said, "demonstrates that this will be a long, hard-fought but peaceful struggle against secrecy, torture and the misguided institution of the military commissions."

The defendants' actions outraged relatives of the victims.

"They're engaging in jihad in a courtroom," said Debra Burlingame, whose brother, Charles, was the pilot of the plane that flew into the Pentagon. She watched the proceeding from Brooklyn on one of the closed-circuit video feeds around the United States.

A handful of those who lost family members in the attacks were selected by a lottery and flown to watch the proceedings at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, where Mohammed and his co-defendants put off their pleas until a later date.

They face 2,976 counts of murder and terrorism in the 2001 attacks that sent hijacked jetliners into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The charges carry the death penalty.

The detainees' lawyers spent hours questioning the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, about his qualifications to hear the case and suggested their clients were being mistreated at the hearing, in a strategy that could pave the way for future appeals. Mohammed was subjected to a strip search and "inflammatory and unnecessary" treatment before court, said his attorney, David Nevin.

It was the defendants' first appearance in more than three years after stalled efforts to try them for the terror attacks.

The Obama administration renewed plans to try the men at Guantanamo Bay after a bid to try the men in New York City blocks from the trade center site hit political opposition. Officials adopted new rules with Congress that forbade testimony obtained through torture or cruel treatment, and they now say that defendants could be tried as fairly here as in a civilian court.

Nevin said it would be impossible to present testimony against his client that wasn't corrupted by treatment that he says amounted torture. "It's not possible to untaint the evidence any more than it is to unring a bell."

Eddie Bracken of Staten Island, New York, was one of the victims' relatives allowed to attend the hearing, and said it was important to him to see the people accused of killing his sister, Lucy Fishman, a Brooklyn mother of two who worked in the World Trade Center.
He said he came away with impressed with the military justice system, with defense lawyers putting up an aggressive defense.

"If they had done this another country it would have been a different story," Bracken said Sunday. "But this is America."

Human rights groups and defense lawyers say the secrecy of Guantanamo and the military tribunals will make it impossible for the defense. They argued the U.S. kept the case out of civilian court to prevent disclosure of the treatment of prisoners like Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced in 2009 that Mohammed and his co-defendants would be tried blocks from the site of the destroyed trade center in downtown Manhattan, but the plan was shelved after New York officials cited huge costs to secure the neighborhood and family opposition to trying the suspects in the U.S.

Congress then blocked the transfer of any prisoners from Guantanamo to the U.S., forcing the Obama administration to refile the charges under a reformed military commission system.

Mohammed, a Pakistani citizen who grew up in Kuwait and attended college in Greensboro, North Carolina, has admitted to military authorities that he was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks "from A to Z," as well as about 30 other plots, and that he personally killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Mohammed was captured in 2003 in Pakistan.

Ramzi Binalshibh was allegedly chosen to be a hijacker but couldn't get a U.S. visa and ended up providing assistance such as finding flight schools. Walid bin Attash, also from Yemen, allegedly ran an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan and researched flight simulators and timetables. Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi is a Saudi accused of helping the hijackers with money, Western clothing, traveler's checks and credit cards. Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, a Pakistani national and nephew of Mohammed, allegedly provided money to the hijackers.

During the failed first effort to prosecute the men at the base in Cuba, Mohammed mocked the tribunal and said he and his co-defendants would plead guilty and welcome execution. The lawyers' statements indicate that plan has changed.

NBC News' Michael Isikoff contributed to this story from The Associated Press.

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