GUANTANAMO BAY US NAVAL BASE, Cuba, Aug 23 (AFP) - Only a sanitised glimpse of Australian David Hicks' life as a Taliban fighter or what it was like for Salim Hamdan to be Osama bin Laden's personal driver and bodyguard will be given when their military trials open on Tuesday.
Hicks, a 29-year-old former Kangaroo hunter who converted to Islam, Hamdan, and two other defendants due to be formally charged this week, have been detained in virtual secrecy since they were captured in Afghanistan in December 2001.
They have been in Camp Delta, the maximum security prison at the Guantanamo Bay US Navy Base, since January 2002, with hardly any access to lawyers until the charges were first drawn up this year.
Classified information on their activities will be kept to private hearings of the military commissions hearing the charges.
The US military has warned it could even stop media from reporting comments that are read in public and it does not even want a court artist to sketch the faces of defendants.
The Australian has been condemned by his government as "a fool" but Hicks is already the absent star of a documentary "The President Versus David Hicks" that traces his path to Afghanistan.
Hicks has been widely described as a teenaged rebel who acquired a taste for adventure.
Born in Adelaide and raised in a broken home, Hicks had two children in Australia with a former girlfriend.
He worked as a ranch hand, kangaroo hunter, amateur rodeo rider and chicken boner before going to Japan in 1998 to train horses.
A fascination with Muslims led him to the Balkans in 1999 to fight for the Muslim-led Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbian forces. A photograph of him carrying a bazooka there has already gone down in Australian folklore.
After converting in 2000, he adopted the name Mohammed Dawoud. According to US authorities, he was also known as Abu Muslim al Austraili.
The charges also say Hicks went to Pakistan in 1999, linked up with a radical group, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, and was sent to Afghanistan.
He started attending Al-Qaeda training camps from January 2001 and when he once met bin Laden, according to the charges, Hicks offered to translate camp materials from Arabic to English.
He was also said to have carried out surveillance of the US and British embassies in Kabul in August 2001, just before the September 11 attacks.
Hicks faces charges of conspiracy to carry out terrorist attacks, attempted murder by firing on US and coalition forces and aiding the enemy. His lawyer has said Hicks will plead not guilty to the charges, which could lead to a life jail term.
According to his military-appointed lawyer, Salim Hamdan, 34, is also a kind of lost soul.
Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, who has sought to take Hamdan's case to the US Supreme Court, has said the Yemeni was a pilgrim heading for Tajikistan when he came across bin Laden in 1996 or 1997.
Hamdan worked as a driver for bin Laden at his farm near the Afghan city of Kandahar and was captured in November 2001.
Swift says his client knew nothing about bin Laden's links to attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1996 or on the USS Cole in Yemen in 1997 or September 11.
US military prosecutors accuse him of conspiracy, saying Hamdan knew about the attacks, delivered arms and supplies to Al-Qaeda, purchased Toyota Hi-Lux trucks to transport bin Laden and served as the Al-Qaeda leader's bodyguard.
The two other Guantanamo inmates to appear this week also face conspiracy charges: Ali Hamza Ahmed al Bahlul, a 33-year-old Yemeni, and Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi, a 44-year-old Sudanese.
According to the prosecution, Qosi joined Al-Qaeda in 1989 and became an accountant for the network and one of its front companies. In 1996 he also became a driver and bodyguard for bin Laden.
The prosecution says Bahlul, a writer, went from Yemen to Afghanistan in 1999, to volunteer for Al-Qaeda. Bin Laden assigned him to work in the Al-Qaeda media office preparing recruiting videos before he too became a bodyguard.