GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -

Prosecutors and lawyers alike awaited anxiously to hear whether the White House on Tuesday would order this notorious prison closed and the widely maligned military-commission hearings held here against 21 men, including Canada's Omar Khadr, called off.

Freshly minted President Barack Obama did not immediately tip his hand publicly.

"There's been no executive order by President Obama, no word from Secretary (Robert) Gates of the Dept. of Defence, no word from the convening authority," said Air Force Col. Peter Masciola, the chief defence lawyer for the commission.

"All three . . . could halt these proceedings or withdraw the charges."

Without such an order, hearings against five men accused of direct involvement in the 9-11 terrorist attack on the United States and Canada's Omar Khadr, accused of killing an American soldier, were slated to resume Wednesday morning.

An FBI special agent testified Tuesday that Khadr had identified Canadian Maher Arar from a photograph the day before the U.S. sent the Ottawa software engineer to Syria, where he was tortured -- a confluence of events Khadr's lawyer derisively called an "amazing coincidence."

In contrast to testimony he gave Monday, special agent Robert Fuller told Khadr's war-crimes hearing that the young Canadian was not immediately able to name Arar, but did say he looked familiar.

"We gave him an opportunity to think about the photograph and where he may have seen him," Fuller said under cross-examination.

After a "couple of minutes," Khadr identified Arar.

Fuller interrogated Khadr, who had just turned 16, on five different occasions in October at the U.S.-run Bagram prison in Afghanistan, where the badly injured teenager was taken following a deadly firefight near the Afghan town of Khost in July 2002.

The sole purpose of the Oct. 7 interview -- the first of the five -- was to see if Khadr could in fact identify Arar.

The Toronto-born Khadr told his interrogators he had never seen Arar in Canada, but had seen him "several times" at an al-Qaida safehouse in Kabul, and possibly as well at a training camp just outside the Afghan capital, the agent said.

The safehouse was run by Abu Musab al-Siri, a Syrian considered to be a key al-Qaida strategist.

Fuller said he was unaware at the time that Arar had been detained in New York City two weeks earlier, having been pulled off his plane during a stopover en route back to Canada following a vacation in the Middle East.

Nor did Fuller know the U.S. rendered Arar to Syria on Oct. 8 rather than follow normal practice and return him to Canada.

"Do you have any knowledge in fact that the lead you obtained from Omar Khadr led to Mr. Arar's deportation in October of 2002 to Syria, one day after you had obtained that information from Mr. Khadr?" co-defence lawyer Lt.-Cmdr. Walter Ruiz asked.

"No," Fuller said.

Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, who is also defending Khadr, sarcastically called it an "amazing coincidence" the U.S. would send Arar to Syria the day after the interrogation.

Kerry Pither, Arar's former spokeswoman, said Tuesday the FBI's tactics were "immoral, vengeful, and quite frankly desperate."

"It's very clear that the FBI's testimony was intentionally misleading and designed to inflict as much damage as possible to Maher Arar."

Pither, author of a book about Arar and three other Arab-Canadians who were tortured in Syria, wonders whether Canadian officials had any role in encouraging the Americans to ask Khadr about the photograph.

Arar has not commented on Fuller's testimony.

Col. Patrick Parrish ordered Tuesday's session halted early ahead of Obama's inauguration ceremony.

The prosecutors did ponder asking for all the war-crimes trials at Guantanamo Bay to be adjourned until Obama's administration offered some guidance on its plans for Guantanamo Bay.

Masciola said the defence wants the military commissions scrapped altogether.

"They don't, like us, think that the commissions process is fundamentally flawed and don't meet our constitutional . . . standards," Masciola said.

The defence wants the charges withdrawn without prejudice, meaning the men could later be tried either in a federal court or military court.

Pentagon spokesman Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon refused to discuss the issue.

Kuebler called any prosecution attempt to suspend the current proceedings a "last-ditch effort to save this disgusting mess."

Arar has steadfastly denied ever visiting Afghanistan. An exhaustive commission of inquiry would eventually conclude that he had no terrorist links, prompting the government to pay him $10.5 million in compensation.

In Ottawa, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said the inquiry, presided over by Justice Dennis O'Connor, Ontario's associate chief justice, was the final word on the Arar file.

In his report of the interrogation, Fuller wrote that Khadr told him the Arar sightings occurred in September or early October of 2001.

Khadr's lawyers pounced on the information. Both the RCMP and U.S. authorities have proof that Arar was in fact in either Canada or the U.S. during that time frame, Kuebler said.

"It just goes to show you the overall reliability of the information that was coming out of him as a critically wounded 15-year-old boy in U.S. custody -- he would say anything to please his interrogators."

Khadr, now 22, is accused of throwing a hand grenade that killed an American soldier following a four-hour bombardment of the compound he was in July 2002, when he was just 15.

He is the lone westerner in this infamous prison, and one of the youngest people ever to face a war-crimes trial.