GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — The U.S. military has formed a five-member military tribunal to preside over the first trials of terror suspects held at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay — including two alleged bodyguards of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, officials said Tuesday. The Pentagon’s announcement came a day after the Supreme Court ruled that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay can appeal their detention to civilian courts. The Supreme Court ruling was a blow to President Bush’s stance that the United States can jail terror suspects without judicial review and that the Cuban base is outside the reach of U.S. courts. Relatives and advocates now are planning hundreds of lawsuits to challenge the detainees’ captivity. The first trials — involving a Sudanese and a Yemeni who allegedly had guarded bin Laden, as well as an Australian terror suspect — would be the first military tribunals convened by the United States since the end of World War II. “This is an important first step,” Air Force Maj. John Smith, a lawyer who helped draft the tribunal rules, said in a telephone interview from the Pentagon. “We’d like to have a case tried by the end of the year.” Smith said the trials would be held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, where detainees have been held since January 2002 and now number about 600 from 42 countries. The first to be tried will be David Hicks of Australia, Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul of Yemen and Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi of Sudan. The three are the only detainees charged to date and are three of only four detainees allowed access to lawyers. The Pentagon did not say who would go to trial first. Lawyers will be contacted “in the near future” about setting a trial schedule. The men have been charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes and other offenses that carry sentences of up to life imprisonment, the Pentagon has said, ruling out death sentences for the three. The tribunals are empowered to deliver a death sentence only if members reach a unanimous decision. Presiding officer will be retired Army Col. Peter E. Brownback III, a judge advocate for 22 years and a military judge for nearly 10 years, the Pentagon said. Other panel members are two Marine colonels, an Air Force colonel and an Air Force lieutenant colonel. Smith said one alternate also has been named. The suspects are: Hicks, a 28-year-old convert to Islam. He is accused of training at al-Qaida camps and taking up arms against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. Charges include war-crimes conspiracy, attempted murder and aiding the enemy. His lawyers say he will plead innocent. Al Qosi and al Bahlul are charged with war-crimes conspiracy. Al Qosi allegedly was an al-Qaida accountant and bin Laden bodyguard. Al Bahlul allegedly was a bin Laden bodyguard and a propagandist for al-Qaida. The U.S. government has maintained that the prisoners at Guantanamo, suspected of links to al-Qaida and Afghanistan’s fallen Taliban regime, are “enemy combatants” — not prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. The Bush administration has come under criticism for holding the detainees without charge or legal recourse — in some cases for years. Some critics argue not all the detainees are connected to terrorism.

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