Guantanamo hearings continue as Obama is sworn in

MILITARY judges in a Guantanamo war crimes court were pressing forward yesterday with hearings for five men accused of orchestrating the September 11 attacks and a Canadian accused of killing a US soldier.

Several days of pretrial motions were scheduled to start a day before the inauguration of president-elect Barack Obama, who has said he will close the offshore prison at the US Navy base in Cuba.

Lawyers and representatives of human rights groups who have come to observe the hearings believe Obama will suspend the military commission system created by Congress and President George W Bush in 2006 to prosecute dozens of men held at Guantanamo.