Lawyers made opening statements Tuesday as the trial began in earnest for the first former Guantanamo detainee transferred to U.S. soil. While the government portrayed the slight, baby-faced 36-year-old as a vicious al Qaeda murderer who helped plan two US embassy bombings that killed 224 people, the defense told a very different story. Although not contesting much of the evidence the government plans to present — about the bombings themselves, its destructiveness and their innocent victims — defense lawyers argue that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was a hapless young Tanzanian duped into helping his powerful childhood friends who, unbeknownst to him, were al Qaeda killers.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy, Jr. released a forceful 36-page opinion in the case of a Guantanamo detainee that would ordinarily be shocking. Sadly, such opinions are now so common that, except for one news story and a few particularly alert bloggers, they get barely a mention in the news.

It was an odd sequence of events.

First, on Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee passed a bill to stop the Obama administration from purchasing a new prison that could house detainees now at the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay under lock and key here in the United States.

A child is being prosecuted for following orders by a powerful father and his al Qaeda associates to do bad things.

The second update today from Daphne Eviatar’s observations of the Guantanamo military commissions.

Why did the Obama administration decide to make the case of Omar Khadr its first trial in a military commission?

Human Rights First will be blogging on the OPR Report hearing today.

David Danzig is currently visiting Guantanamo to oversee legal proceedings.

As we await the announcement of President Obama’s plan to close Guantanamo, we can be hopeful that the tide of fear-mongering that has muddied this debate is being to ebb.

Omar Khadr has served seven years in detention without any legal end in sight.