USS Cole suspect appears in Guantanamo court

By Matthew Rusling Nov 9, 2011, 17:39 GMT

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - The man suspected of masterminding the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole was arraigned Wednesday in his first-ever appearance in public since his capture nine years ago.

Seated next to his lawyers at the end of a long table in a military court at the US Naval facility at Guantanamo Bay, Saudi-born Abd al-Rahim Hussayn Muhammad al-Nashiri, 46, declined to say he was guilty or not guilty, opting to do so at a later time.

Nashiri, who wore a loose, white prison-issue T-shirt, is charged with plotting the bombing of the US Navy vessel when it was docked off the coast of Yemen. Seventeen 17 US sailors were killed and 40 more were wounded in the attack, which blew a massive hole in the side of the ship.

Nashiri's arraignment on Wednesday marked the start of the first new case brought before the military tribunals since US President Barack Obama in March ordered the resumption of the hotly debated process for trying some terror suspects held at Guantananmo.

It is also the first Guantanamo tribunal in which the accused could face the death penalty.

Commander Andrea Lockhart, a member of the prosecution team, read the charges, which included conspiracy to commit terrorism, attacking civilians and and violating the law of war.

The Pentagon, which is prosecuting Nashiri, also alleges that al-Nashiri was behind an attempted attack on USS The Sullivans in the Port of Aden in January 2000 and the attack on the French civilian oil tanker MV Limburg in the Gulf of Aden in October 2002 that left one person dead.

Since his capture, Nashiri was subjected to a number of waterboardings - a procedure intended to make the recipient feel as if he or she is drowning - according to documents released in 2009. In 2007, the defendant said he confessed to the Cole attack as a result of being repeatedly waterboarded.

'This is a big part of the case, what happened to Mr Nashiri and how he was treated will certainly be a big part of any penalty phase, should we get to a penalty phase,' Nashiri's defence counsel Richard Kammen told reporters Tuesday.

In court, Kammen, a private lawyer, told the judge, Army Colonel James Pohl, that he was concerned that his client would not receive a fair trial under the military commission.

Another member of the defence team, a military lawyer, also complained that the court had been opening privileged attorney-client mail, which should be private communication. Kammen complained earlier this week that he was forced to file motions to prevent mail between Nashiri and himself from being read.

'We just wan'na be treated like any other defendant,' Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Reyes said.

Before the court proceedings, Kammen had also told reporters that he believed military commissions were 'organized to convict and to kill.' He said it was unfair that just two days before the arraignment, 200 pages of new courtroom regulations had been published and that as of Tuesday, his team had not yet seen them.

His team had also not seen evidence against the defendant - material that the prosecution is obliged to share with defence attorneys.

But military prosecutors defended the need for secrecy in such a trial. Chief prosecutor Army Brigadier General Mark Martins told reporters the country's secrets 'are not an open book,' but insisted the accused 'will be well represented.'

National security requires a balance, he said. While democracy requires certain information to be public, there are 'items that cannot be publicly disclosed for the sake of security,' he said.

Those include US troop movements, intelligence gathering and information on a terrorist organization or its affiliates, he said.

Civil liberty advocates have argued that the rules are unfairly stacked against the accused in a military tribunal, and have pushed for civilian trials in the US. Obama also wanted to pursue civilian trials, but met a roadblock in Congress and in New York City, where the trials were to have been held.