GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- The Pentagon turned the lights back on its special 9/11 war court Wednesday and arraigned a Sudanese captive accused of helping run a jihadist training camp in 1990s Afghanistan.

''I want to say only that I'm not guilty. That's all,'' said Noor Uthman Mohammed of Sudan, who was wearing a white skullcap and prison camp uniform of a cooperative captive.

Noor, in his 40s, could be sentenced to serve life in prison if he is convicted by a military commission of conspiring with al Qaeda and supporting terror.

Pakistan security forces captured him in notorious company: in a March 2002 raid on Faisalabad, which netted the CIA alleged arch-terrorist Abu Zubaydeh. Noor and about a dozen lesser-known captives were sent to Guantánamo in August 2002.

The hearing was a routine, first reading of charges for a man who had never before appeared at the war court created by the Bush administration to stage the first U.S. war crimes tribunals since World War II.

It was held just days after Barack Obama's advisors disclosed in a series of leaks that the president-elect will order a methodical closure of the prison camps that hold 250 detainees here, possibly on his first day in office.

Also Wednesday, the Office of Military Commissions disclosed that on Monday night the prosecutor filed new charges against three men captured along with Noor and held here: Ghassan al Sharbi, 34, and Jibran Qahtani, 31, of Saudi Arabia; and Soufian Barhoumi, 35, of Algeria.

The commissions have been dark since before Christmas and have a full week of pretrial hearings beginning Monday, straddling the presidential inauguration.

Obama has said emptying prison camps could help restore U.S. standing internationally. He has said he prefers captives to face federal criminal trials or conventional military courts martial -- but has not specifically said whether he will end the special trials.

''Until competent authority deems otherwise, we proceed full steam ahead in this process,'' said Navy Cmdr. John Ellington, the Noor case prosecutor.

Countered the Pentagon's Chief Defense Counsel, Air Force Col. Peter Masciola: ``It doesn't make any sense from a legal perspective to go forward in a system you're going to change.''

As of Wednesday, 21 of the 250 captives here were at some stage of pretrial proceedings. The Pentagon prosecutor seeks the death penalty for six of them.

Three earlier detainees had been convicted: Al Qaeda foot soldier David Hicks of Australian and Osama bin laden driver Salim Hamdan, who are now both free in their homelands, and a bin Laden media secretary, Ali Hamza al Bahlul, who is serving life in prison.

Critics have condemned the commissions as a Bush administration creation with still evolving rules, a remote and makeshift location and occasional secrecy.

Advocates defend it as a war on terror necessity that balances the need to protect America's secrets with the prosecution of select accused.

Tuesday, defense lawyers disclosed that the Bush appointee for commissions, Susan Crawford, issued new charge sheets for all the accused in late December, a move that freshened up a potential jury pool of U.S. military officers.

But the administrative move also prompted defense lawyers to question whether to bring the accused from the prison for new arraignments next week.

Anthony Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union called the move ''a last minute do-over'' and ``clear attempt to get coerced guilty pleas from the accused in order to tie the new president's hands and make it more difficult to shut down these sham commissions.''

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