Military practices a mock tribunal

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The U.S. military has held a dress rehearsal of planned tribunals for al Qaeda and Taliban combatants, complete with a defendant who acted up and had to be restrained and ejected.

The mock trial was conducted in early November at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the Pentagon is holding 660 "enemy combatants" captured during the conflict in Afghanistan. A building near the detention center has been converted into a courthouse for the expected trials.

Prosecutors played the roles of presiding judge and defense attorneys, while military police played defendants and their own role of providing court security, military sources said.

Some of the rehearsal's main objectives were to work out procedures for getting defendants into and out of the courtroom, maintaining security and handling the media pool.

At one point, a "defendant" acted up and had to be removed. "They practiced what to do if one of the detainees had some sort of an outburst in court," said one source. "Who will do what -- how to get him out of the courtroom, how to get people into the courtroom."

Army Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, chief spokeswoman at Guantanamo's Camp Delta detention center, confirmed that an "internal exercise" took place.

"We don't want to get ahead of the Defense Department," Col. Hart said. "We have not gotten any official order or directive from the Department of Defense to hold commissions, so it's all premature. In the military, we practice everything. So we did an exercise, so we are ready to get such an order."

Asked if the rehearsal included a disgruntled defendant, Col. Hart said: "We practice every aspect, everything we think of that might occur in a given military situation."