Alleged USS Cole bomber sits for second Guantanamo hearing

Jan 17, 2012, 19:40 GMT

Guantanamo/Fort Meade, Maryland - Pre-trial military tribunal hearings resumed Tuesday at Guantanamo in the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who allegedly masterminded the 2000 USS Cole bombing that killed 17 US sailors.

The hearing is the first at Guntanamo so far this year, as well as the first one after the controversial US prison camp, which celebrated its 10th anniversary on January 11 amid protest from human rights groups. A total of 171 detainees are still being held there.

The hearings against the Saudi-born al-Nashiri, 46, started in November. At the time, he declined to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty, opting to do so later. If found guilty, he could become the first Guantanamo detainee to be sentenced to death.

Al-Nashiri appeared before the commission Tuesday in a white prison uniform and followed proceedings through a simultaneous interpreter.

Broadcast of the hearing to journalists watching from a military base at Fort Meade, Maryland, was delayed a few seconds in a bid to prevent airing statements that US authorities would like to keep secret.

Sources at the Pentagon said that around 10 relatives of the Cole attack's victims attended the hearing in Guantanamo.

Al-Nashiri's case is the first to be heard by a military tribunal in Guantanamo since US President Barack Obama ordered in March that such proceedings against alleged terrorists be re-launched. During the hiatus, the White House failed to bring the trials into US civilian courts, which Obama had promised to do during his 2008 campaign.

New rules are now in place, however, which prohibit admission of evidence obtained by cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment such as water-boarding.

The hearing started Tuesday and was set to end Wednesday. Judge James Pohl, who is presiding over the case, was also expected to set a date for the start of the actual trial.

The attack on USS Cole, which al-Nashiri allegedly masterminded, took place while the US Navy vessel was docked off the coast of Yemen in October 2000. It killed 17 US sailors and injured 40.

The Pentagon also alleges that al-Nashiri, captured nine years ago, 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, which left one person dead.

After his capture, al-Nashiri was subjected to a number of water boardings, according to documents released in 2009. In 2007, the defendant said he confessed to the USS Cole attack as a result.

Al-Nashiri's arraignment opens the door for upcoming tribunals of such high-level suspects as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed orchestrator of the attacks on New York and Washington, on September 11, 2001.