Guantánamo Bay Opens an Extra Courtroom

Planners added the national security courtroom for pretrial hearings and to prepare for the possibility of a Sept. 11 trial.

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An entrance to the legal complex at Guantánamo Bay.

Military staff members have yet to put a clock on a wall or stabilize the air-conditioning. Yet the Pentagon managed to open its long-delayed $4 million secondary courtroom this week and hold simultaneous hearings in adjacent chambers at Guantánamo Bay.

The step was small but significant. It meant that, if pretrial issues and housing problems are ever resolved, the war court could hold a trial in one of its four active cases without bringing the other three to a standstill.

This week’s opening put the idea to a test.

A military judge in the new courtroom heard lawyers argue motions in the 2002 Bali bombing case while the defendant, an Indonesian prisoner known as Hambali, looked on. In the original courtroom next door, a second judge presided over testimony from an F.B.I. witness in the Sept. 11, 2001, case but with two key constituencies missing.

None of the defendants accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks came to court on Tuesday morning. And the four journalists who traveled to the base on Saturday planning to cover both hearings were denied access inside on Tuesday morning.

The court spokesman notified media representatives on Monday night that none of the journalists could move back and forth between the two hearings, as court reporters routinely do.

Instead, they had to choose to observe one hearing and stay there, at least until lunch. All opted to see Mr. Hambali’s judge gavel open the hearing in the new courtroom, which was retrofitted with a gallery for the public.

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