Pentagon defense lawyers this week appealed the war crimes conviction of Osama bin Laden's media secretary at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on free speech grounds.

They argued that filmmaker Ali Hamza al Bahlul of Yemen was denied several constitutional protections at his military commission trial, which found him guilty of three war crimes on Nov. 3.

``Mr. al Bahlul is not a sympathetic defendant. He embraces an ideology that glorifies violence, justifies terrorism and opposes constitutional democracy,'' said the 50-page appeal, filed Tuesday with the U.S. Court for Military Commission Review.

``As offensive as it may be, [Bahlul's film work] is speech that falls within the core protections of the First Amendment, which forbids the prosecution of `the thoughts, the beliefs, the ideals of the accused.' ''

Prosecutors argued at the four-day no-contest trial that Bahlul incited suicide bombers before the 9/11 attacks by producing a crude al Qaeda recruiting film. The two-hour video spliced footage of fiery bin Laden speeches with the aftermath of the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors off Aden, Yemen.

But a four-member attorney team argued in their appeal that the video ``provides a valuable window into the anxieties and grievances of a substantial number of Muslims inside and outside the United States.

``It is a political argument on what has proven to be the dominant political debate of the past decade,'' they wrote. ``If nothing else, it warrants the protection of the First Amendment so that Americans can have the information they need. . . .''

Bahlul, sentenced to life in prison, is currently the lone convicted war criminal at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba. Two earlier convicts -- David Hicks of Australia and Salim Hamdan of Yemen -- served short sentences and are now free in their native countries.

It was unclear whether Bahlul had authorized the attorneys to file the appeal, which is automatically required under the rules that created military commissions in 2006.

The Yemeni captive has consistently refused to work with the U.S. military attorneys who were assigned to defend him during his seven years at Guantánamo.

Moreover, he refused to mount a defense at trial and instead offered a 40-minute monologue that paid homage to bin Laden. During the prosecutor's closing, Bahlul also waved a tiny boat and airplane, fashioned from folded paper, while the prosecutor sought to link the Cole bombing video to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Also unclear is where and when the appeal might be heard.

Under current commissions rules, a trio of Pentagon appointees would hear arguments later this year. But the Obama administration has proposed a change that would have the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, a 58-year-old institution, review the case, and then the U.S. Supreme Court.

Once convicted, Bahlul was segregated from the other detainees at Guantánamo under an interpretation of the Geneva Conventions that forbids convicts from being held with war prisoners.

The Obama administration has not yet said whether he might be moved to a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility under a White House order to empty the prison camps by early next year.

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