One morning five years ago, in a cell in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, a bedsheet was pulled from a cot, fashioned into a noose, and tied onto the window bars. Was this a suicide attempt by the cell’s occupant, Robert George, a dangerous inmate who once bit off a prison guard’s finger in a fit of rage? Or had a high-ranking jail official, Salvatore LoPresti, fashioned the noose in order to provide a convenient explanation for the bruises across George’s body, which prosecutors charge prison guards had left with their fists? A federal jury’s answer to those questions will decide the outcome of Mr. LoPresti’s trial on charges of making false statements and conspiring to deprive George of his civil rights. The trial is set to begin a week from today, with jury selection starting tomorrow.

The trial will offer a rare glimpse into the workings of the Metropolitan Detention Center. The federal jail, located in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn, was the subject of a scathing Justice Department report on the treatment of Muslim men rounded up and detained there shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. For about six years, Mr. LoPresti, who no longer works at the jail, was a top official there, with direct oversight over nearly 300 guards.

“Mr. LoPresti is a highly successful and valuable public servant who did outstanding work at the MDC for a number of very difficult years,” a lawyer for Mr. LoPresti, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, said. “For whatever reason the government has seen fit to bring a false charge against him. That is what the evidence will show.”

The allegations involving the noose incident were uncovered during the government’s investigation into the treatment of the September 11 detainees. In all, prosecutors had also charged four other current and former guards at the MDC with taking part in either assaulting George or submitting false reports describing a suicide attempt. In the last two weeks, the others have all pleaded guilty. It is unlikely that the jury trying Mr. LoPresti will learn of those guilty pleas.

In an effort to prove that the noose was a prop hung by the guards, the prosecution, according to court papers, intends to argue that George was never suicidal, and told the jail’s chief psychologist that he had not tried to hang himself. It is unclear whether George will testify. The defense, according to court documents, intends to tell the jury about George’s behavior behind bars, which includes frequent fights with guards. George was originally convicted of passport fraud, and there have been later charges against him for the assault of prison staff.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, which is prosecuting the case, declined to comment on the coming trial.