During the six years that "enemy combatants" captured in Afghanistan have been detained on this American base in Cuba, not a single one has been tried. And on top of that, the most anticipated of these trials - that of young Canadian Omar Khadr - has just undergone another worrying rebound.

    Late Thursday, the departure of Judge Peter E. Brownback, who presided over Khadr's trial, was announced. Why has he left? No explanation was given. The judge has made no statement.

    It was by "mutual agreement" with the Army that this military judge decided to return to the retirement he emerged from in 2004.

    What is that "mutual agreement?" Was he pushed out? Three weeks ago, he humorously complained about the pressure put on him to expedite the trial. He had given the Pentagon a lot of trouble last year when he declared he had no competence to hear the case, since no one had proven that Khadr was an "illegal enemy combatant" - a decision overruled on appeal.

    He also threatened to terminate the trial if Khadr's detainee file was not handed over to his lawyers by May 22 - which was done.

    Certainly, he has also shaken up the defense. But doubt hovers over the case and one will not reproach Khadr's military lawyer, William C. Kuebler, with observing that "the judge who prevented the government from advancing the case the way it wanted to has suddenly departed" and with finding the thing "very strange."

    And there's more. One of the warmest advocates for the system of military commissions, Col. Morris Davis, resigned last fall from his position as prosecutor.

    In 2006, this prosecutor scathingly denounced the media that dared criticize the process. He asserted that the procedures of these exceptional tribunals would allow "complete, just, and open" trials.

    He now says that it's a scandal to call that institution a "military commission:" it's a political commission, he says, given the degree to which the military hierarchy is trying to control and unduly influence the process.

    At the maximum, Guantanamo accommodated a little more than 700 prisoners. Most of them have been freed on the quiet. Now about 270 remain. At present, ten have been charged. But no trial has yet taken place. And the goal of completing a trial before the presidential election in November seems ever more doubtful.

    A single prisoner, an Australian, has pleaded guilty to having "materially assisted" al-Qaeda terrorists. He was condemned to nine months of additional jail time in his own country.

    In spite of two strict judgments in 2004 and 2006 by the Supreme Court - which found violations of American and international law - the Bush administration has maintained these commissions by making a few adjustments in their organization.

    This mysterious departure of the judge in the Omar Khadr trial occurs a week after the Canadian Supreme Court's unanimous judgment that will force Canadian authorities to supply Khadr with the contents of the interrogations he underwent with various Canadian secret service representatives - information, moreover, that had already been transmitted to the Americans.

    The Supreme Court noted that normally the Canadian Charter does not apply outside Canadian territory. However, as violations of international law had been found by the American Supreme Court itself, there was reason to make an exception.

    There was a message in that decision that the Harper government obviously did not get. Even Great Britain calls for the closure of Guantanamo. All Western countries have asked to try their own citizens.

    The Canadian government, however, is not even demanding that Khadr be tried in an American civilian court. Against all reason, it trusts the US process.

    Evidently, given the fanatical father who died fighting for al-Qaeda, Khadr's case does not appeal to all voters.

    However, as Toronto Star journalist Michelle Shephard explains in a recently published book [1], that's not the question. This child was 15 years and 10 months old when he was sent into battle. It is not appropriate that he be in this type of prison or subject to this kind of trial: our international commitments clearly condemn both.

    Moreover, he has already done six years of prison for a crime it is far from certain he committed - the murder of an American soldier.

    Up until now, in fact, the story was simple: after a bombing of al-Qaeda positions, American soldiers approached, believing all the fighters to be dead. A grenade was thrown among them and one American soldier died. They fired and afterwards arrested Khadr, the sole survivor - and hence the sole suspect.

    But a statement by an American soldier that was handed over to journalists by mistake shows that there was another survivor and raises more than one question.

    But those questions don't bother our government, which remains one of the last to trust this sub-justice that dishonors the United States.

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    [1] "Guantanamo's Child," Wiley, 2008.

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    Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.