Now that was a real nail-biter. The court designed by the White House and its Congressional enablers to guarantee convictions of high-profile detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba - using evidence obtained by torture and secret evidence as desired - has held its first trial. It produced... a guilty verdict. The military commission of six senior officers (whose names have not been made public) found Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who worked as one of Osama bin Laden’s drivers until 2001, guilty of one count of providing material support for terrorism. The rules of justice on Guantánamo are so stacked against defendants that the only surprise was that Mr. Hamdan was actually acquitted on the more serious count of conspiring (it was unclear with whom) to kill Americans during the invasion of Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001.

In a saner world, yesterday's partial acquittal of Salim Hamdan might persuade critics that military commissions aren't the Star Chambers of political caricature. It won't, of course. But for all the press corps innuendo about jurors "handpicked by the Pentagon," these supposed rubber-stamps exonerated an al Qaeda terrorist of some of the charges against him. Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's bodyguard and driver, was charged with two war crimes -- conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism. He was convicted of the latter by a panel of six senior military officers, and now could receive as much as a life sentence. Hamdan was a footsoldier, though by his own admission he provided security and logistics support to al Qaeda. He was privy to the workings of bin Laden's terror network, and was not the mere civilian his lawyers depicted. The conspiracy charge was arguably the more serious. If anything, though, its rejection proves the fairness of the military commissions process, which will stand as the most due-process-minded war tribunal in history.

The split verdict in the trial of Osama bin Laden's former driver redeems somewhat the military commission system created to deal with alleged enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay. But the trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan fell short of the highest traditions of American justice, and even if he files a successful appeal, he would not be set free. Hamdan, a Yemeni captured by Afghan warlords in 2001 and turned over to US forces, was convicted by a military jury of providing material support to Al Qaeda but was acquitted of the more serious charge of conspiracy. The six-member jury apparently was convinced by prosecution arguments that Hamdan assisted Bin Laden in eluding capture after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That the jurors, all senior US military officers, didn't rubber-stamp the charges against Hamdan suggests they were more discerning than opponents of the commission system predicted. But the trial offered few of the protections Hamdan would have enjoyed in a civilian court, and the outcome is unlikely to allay worldwide suspicions about legal proceedings at Guantanamo.