GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Detainees denounce the war-crimes court as a ''sham'' and refuse military lawyers. Attorneys consult their bars, worried that their licenses might be revoked for defending clients who fired them. And the Pentagon presses on in its push for speedy trials.

This drama played out here as a succession of alleged al Qaeda foot soldiers came up for arraignment ahead of the government's plan to stage its showcase trial of six men charged in the Sept. 11 conspiracy.

One case went like this last week: Rather than consult with his lawyer, Ibrahim Qosi of Sudan, 47, jammed his fingers in his ears. Then the man who allegedly served as Osama bin Laden's bodyguard was led into his military commission, defiant.

''Do whatever you wish to do,'' he told the judge, Air Force Lt. Col. Nancy Paul, declaring the trials ''a legal sham'' that ``move at the pace of a turtle in order to gain some time and keep us in these boxes without any human or legal rights.''

Paul ordered the case to move forward, even as Qosi's lawyer, Cmdr. Suzanne Lachelier, a former federal defender, consults the California bar on whether her license will be at risk for representing someone who fired her.

Soon after, the Pentagon lawyer supervising the first U.S. war-crimes tribunals since World War II vowed to press on.

''The rules provide for the process to move forward whether or not the accused chooses to participate,'' said Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, declaring the military trials ''extraordinarily fair by any norm'' and providing ``substantial protections.''

Countered Miami defense attorney Neal Sonnett, who monitors commissions for the American Bar Association: ``If all these cases are going to proceed with empty chairs, what has already been called a kangaroo court will just be highlighted as really a kangaroo court.''

Some in the U.S. legal community and overseas, he said, already decry the trials set up after the Sept. 11 attacks to avoid existing civilian and military courts.

"Because of evidentiary restrictions and hearsay issues and interrogation and torture issues, it would be a monumental task to defend them if they're sitting there and communicating with you," Sonnett said. "If they refuse to come into the room, it's almost impossible to render assistance as counsel."

The first trial is scheduled for late June with bin Laden's driver facing life imprisonment on an al Qaeda conspiracy charge. The driver has cooperated with his lawyers for years, so much so that Salim Hamdan brought the commissions to a standstill in a challenge to the Supreme Court.

Advocates defend commissions as war-on-terror necessities to safeguard American national security secrets during an ongoing war against al Qaeda. In them, alleged terrorists held for years get Pentagon-paid military lawyers and a presumption of innocence -- the same as a U.S. soldier facing court martial.

Detainee lawyers say the captives see a defense lawyer in the uniform of their jailers, interrogators, judges and juries -- and don't trust the system. At courts-martial, they say, everyone accepts the military's authority, because they are all members of it -- not like Guantánamo detainees scooped up overseas and held in U.S. custody, many for more than six years.

Even a Guantánamo detainee cleared of a war crime by a commission doesn't necessarily go free. Under Bush administration guidelines, he is still an ''enemy combatant'' subject to indefinite detention in the ``global war on terror.''

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