The Obama administration Wednesday broadly defended as constitutional its predecessor's format for military commissions at Guantánamo but said it would seek to delay next week's sanity hearings in a Sept. 11 case while it revamps its war on terror prosecution strategy.

Assistant Attorney General David Kris wrote in the 30-page filing at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that a claim by military lawyers for accused 9/11 plotter Ramzi bin al Shibh of "constitutional defects in the Military Commissions Act are without merit.''

Bin al Shibh's Navy lawyers asked the civilian court to halt next week's hearings at Guantánamo in a 71-page broadside against the war court created by the Bush administration -- describing the court as "not a legitimate judicial proceeding but a political show trial.''

Defense lawyers filed the challenge in a request for an emergency order because an Army colonel has scheduled a session of military commissions next week at the remote U.S. Navy base in Cuba, even as the Obama administration proposes revamping the war court's rules in Congress.

It fell to Kris, at the Justice Department, to defend the war court for the Obama administration even as he has advocated some key legislative changes to the military commissions format. For example, he wants Congress to eliminate a popular category of crime used by the Pentagon prosecutor -- providing material support for terror -- because, he told a congressional committee this summer, there is a "significant risk'' that category of crime could not be considered a war crime on appeal.

In his filing Wednesday, he contended that the defense lawyers' arguments for a freeze were not valid. He also told a three-judge panel of the appeals court that, under the current war court rules set up by Congress in 2006, the civilian court had no authority to intrude.

Still, he said, the Obama administration was preparing to seek a 60-day delay from the 9/11 judge, Army Col. Stephen Henley, because "a decision might be made to prosecute [bin al Shibh] in federal court.'' If Henley agrees, that would mark the third delay in the death penalty trial since Barack Obama took office and pledged to empty the prison camps at Guantánamo, which today has some 245 detainees.

Federal prosecutors have been studying the military's case against bin al Shibh and four other alleged co-conspirators at Guantánamo who allegedly financed, plotted and assisted the 19 hijackers who crashed civilian aircraft into the Pentagon, World Trade Center and a Pennsylvania field eight years ago. All five were held for years by the CIA, without charge, before their September 2006 transfer from secret overseas prisons to Guantánamo.

The civilian court in Washington, D.C., is not expected to rule on bin al Shibh's constitutional claim until Friday afternoon at the earliest, after defense lawyers get a chance to respond.

Meantime, the Pentagon prosecutor has invited families of Sept. 11 victims to join media and legal observers in an escorted trip from Andrews Air Force Base on Saturday to watch a week's worth of war court hearings at Guantánamo.

Under the current docket, the hearings begin Monday morning at 8 a.m. with some proposed motions by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who is serving as his own defense lawyer and who offered through court filings to confess to the attacks.

Next week's session is expected to focus on a week's worth of testimony from doctors and Navy medical staff about the mental competency of bin al Shibh, who like Mohammed has asked to serve as his own attorney.

Another military judge has also scheduled a separate pre-trial hearing for Thursday in the case of another alleged al Qaeda member, a Saudi said to be the brother-in-law of one of the 9/11 hijackers.

Bin al Shibh, whom the U.S. military has been treating with psychotropic medications at Guantánamo, allegedly helped the 9/11 hijackers find flight schools in America to carry out the mass murder of 2,973 people on Sept. 11, 2001. The Pentagon prosecutor is seeking the death penalty in the case.

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