GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- An Afghan detainee accused of spying on U.S. forces tried to bite and spit on his guards Wednesday, and was forced into his war court arraignment in handcuffs and leg shackles.
''I don't want any trial,'' protested Mohammed Kamin, wearing the bright orange prison camp jumpsuit of an uncooperative captive.
He called the charges against him lies.
Kamin is accused of spying on U.S. forces in 2003, as well as setting up missiles and launching them at Khost, Afghanistan, while U.S. troops were encamped inside. Conviction carries a maximum life sentence.
It was his first ever court appearance Wednesday, and the Afghan had visible swelling around the rim of his right eye.
Kamin's Pentagon defense lawyer, Navy Lt. Rich Federico, later said that, when he sat down beside him, there were visible injuries on his face -- specifically scrapes around his eyes and on his neck.
The lawyer said he did not know how it happened.
The Miami Herald asked the detention center spokeswoman for an explanation.
Kamin, in his 30s, became the latest war court defendant to refuse his Pentagon-appointed lawyer and pledge to boycott his trial. Seven of eight alleged terrorists who have so far been arraigned have either fired their lawyers or declared their unwillingness to attend.
The slight Afghan with a full shaggy beard did both -- in his native Pashto, through an at times inaudible translation.
''Whatever is God's will, I will face,'' Kamin said. ``My judge is the God who created the sky and the land. He will be my lawyer and represent me. I wait for his decision. That's enough.''
Earlier, Kamin's judge, Air Force Col. W. Thomas Cumbie, ordered the war court defendant forcibly removed from his cell at the prison camp several miles away -- and brought to court by the military police who work there.
Once in court he was seated in the defendant's chair, manacled at the wrists and feet. Sailor guards surrounded him, their boots firmly on the leg of his leather and wooden defendant's chair.
The judge said, for the record, that guards had brought him into court in ''four-point restraints'' because, en route, ``Mr. Kamin was not cooperative with the MPs and in fact attempted to spit on and bite one of the guards.''
In the course of the reading of the charges, Kamin's lawyer, Federico, told the judge he believed that his ethical obligation at trial would be ``to essentially not represent him.''
The judge appeared to disagree. He told Federico, point-blank, that absent an ethical ruling otherwise from Federico's Indiana bar, he would serve as Kamin's defense attorney.
''It is a legitimate defense to boycott,'' Federico said. ``That is what he has clearly indicated he wants to do. So then what authority do I have in defining the scope of representation?''
Kamin became the second detainee forcibly brought to court by the prison camp guards.
Earlier this year, Mohammed Jawad, captured at 17, was dragged from his prison camp cell and into court for his arraignment, his attorneys said. He was shackled at the ankles.
Jawad is accused of throwing a grenade that maimed two U.S. soldiers who were riding in a van in an Afghan bazaar. He showed up at a subsequent trial willingly, and unshackled, but again refused his Pentagon-appointed lawyer.
Kamin is accused of several war crimes, including providing military support to terrorism in early 2003 during the U.S invasion of Afghanistan by joining and training with al Qaeda.
Nothing in the charge sheet suggests anyone was hurt by the explosives.
Kamin's attorney, Federico, said before the man was forced out of his cell and into court Wednesday morning that his client appeared to be joining a growing movement of detainees boycotting their trials -- the first U.S. war crimes tribunals since World War II.
Under court rules, a detainee only has to be brought before the war court once, at his arraignment for the formal reading of charges and a discussion of his rights.
Then he can choose to boycott, and the trial proceeds without him.
Federico said he met his client at least twice before this week's arraignment and on both occasions he spurned his counsel.
'He's unequivocally stated, `I don't want your help,' '' the Navy lieutenant said.
''I don't feel that he understands his options,'' Federico added. ``I don't feel that he has a good exposure, experience or understanding, at all . . . of his fundamental rights and due process in the American legal system.''
He also said the case prosecutor, Air Force Maj. Omar Ashmawy, notified Federico that Kamin has a mental health file on record at the prison camp.
The judge instructed the prison camp to release it, the prosecutor to read it -- and turn over to Federico any part that might be relevant to a defense.
Both Federico and Kamin's judge are making their first appearances at a military commission.
Federico had previously been posted to Italy, and is also assigned as co-counsel in the defense of Ramzi bin al Shibh, who allegedly helped orchestrate the Sept. 11 attacks from Hamburg, Germany.
Cumbie, the chief military judge for the Air Force Atlantic region, is usually stationed at Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle.
This week's session of the military commissions has a short docket -- Wednesday's arraignment plus a Navy lawyer's plea in another case to speak with her client, in his prison camp cell.
A military judge late Friday postponed the portion of this month's session that was to hold the first full-blown war court trial. Judge Keith Allred, a Navy captain, said he would like to first hear from the U.S. Supreme Court on a key detainee rights issue before opening the trial of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver.
The justices could rule by late June.
Thursday's session is a pretrial motions hearing in the war crimes case of alleged bin Laden driver and bodyguard Ibrahim al Qosi of Sudan, and it is also expected to grapple with the boycott issue.
Qosi, 47, who had earlier been accused of being an al Qaeda payroll bookkeeper, refused at his appearance in April to speak with his Pentagon-appointed attorney, Navy Cmdr. Suzanne Lachelier.
In a monologue, he told his trial judge, Air Force Lt. Col. Nancy Paul, that he wanted no attorney, and intended to boycott.
Since then, Lachelier wrote, in a filing with the court, she has learned that he may want a Sudanese attorney or and may seek to represent himself.
Under war court rules, a detainee can serve as his own lawyer if a judge finds him competent. But he cannot hire a foreign lawyer to defend him.
He has so far refused to speak to his lawyer, who for her part has made a most unusual request -- to be taken to his prison camp cell to speak with him.
She wrote in a May 12 filing that earlier meetings required that her client be ``hooded, goggled, ear-muffed, chained and transported around Guantánamo Naval Station before he would be deposited at a facility where defense counsel might meet with him.''
At issue, she said, is getting the Sudanese captive to trust her so she can help him have ''his day in court'' after six years of confinement and an on-again, off-again legal system.
Lachelier offered to argue that issue before Paul on Thursday.