"Will you be the board that is deciding what I'm saying is true?" he asked. "Or will that be another panel?"

Under the framework, the military officers are merely confirming that intelligence agents believe the detainees were either captured on the battlefield or were in league with the Taliban or al Qaeda. Full-blown parole hearings could start in about a month, when military officers start to sift through the case files again to weigh whether they are safe enough to be sent home to the 32 or so nations.

For now, though, the three officers let the captives have their say, six days a week, up to 10 hearings a day, before reviewing the facts of the case, in classified settings without any outside observers. Captives are notified later of the results in their cells.

A QUESTION OF MATH

For an hour Saturday, the young student of Islam sparred with the officers, sometimes scolding them that the United States had wrongly captured and jailed him for nearly three years.

"One plus one is two. But one plus five is not 10. You want to make one plus five equal 10," he said, disputing U.S. logic that he must be an al Qaeda supporter because U.S. intelligence believed that al Qaeda sometimes used the group sponsoring his school as a cover.

Later, sounding sorrowful, he told the officers, "A person is innocent until proven guilty - not guilty until proven innocent. I don't have anything else."

WHAT THE TRIBUNALS ARE

The Combatant Status Review Tribunals for every war-on-terrorism captive at Guantanamo Bay are different from the war-crimes court where four captives so far have been charged.

Not a court, the so-called tribunals are a review of the captives' cases by military officers serving as neither judge nor jury.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

At the war-crimes court, called a Military Commission, on another corner of the Guantanamo base, a three-colonel panel is serving as judge and jury of four captives charged by the Pentagon with war crimes under an executive order by President Bush.

The court resumes hearing motions today in the case of Salim Hamdan, 34, of Yemen, who is accused of conspiracy in part for serving as Osama bin Laden's driver on his farm in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and sometime bodyguard. Hamdan denies through his Navy lawyer that he was either a terrorist or a member of al Qaeda.

Last week, the court heard motions in the case of David Hicks, 29, of Australia, an Outback cowboy turned Muslim who was accused of being in league with the Taliban and al Qaeda.

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