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Trial Guide: The Cole Bombing Case at Guantánamo Bay
Trial Guide: The Cole Bombing Case at Guantánamo Bay
(1 day later)
The Saudi citizen Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri is accused of organizing the Qaeda bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole on Oct. 12, 2000. Two men sailed a bomb-laden skiff alongside the Cole during a routine refueling stop in the port of Aden, Yemen, then blew themselves up. Seventeen American sailors died, and dozens more were wounded. Mr. Nashiri is also accused of a role in the 2002 bombing of the Limburg, a French-flagged, Malaysian-chartered tanker that was carrying Iranian crude oil. A Bulgarian crew member was killed in that attack.
The Saudi citizen Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri is accused of organizing the Qaeda bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole on Oct. 12, 2000. Two men sailed a bomb-laden skiff alongside the Cole during a routine refueling stop in the port of Aden, Yemen, then blew themselves up. Seventeen American sailors died, and dozens more were wounded. Mr. Nashiri is also accused of a role in the 2002 bombing of the Limburg, a French-flagged, Malaysian-chartered tanker that was carrying Iranian crude oil. A Bulgarian crew member was killed in that attack.
The Cole bombing case is the lesser known of the two death-penalty cases being pursued at a military commission at Guantánamo Bay. The other is the case against the five men accused of plotting the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The Cole bombing case is the lesser known of the two death-penalty cases being pursued at a military commission at Guantánamo Bay. The other is the case against the five men accused of plotting the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The case currently has no date for the trial to begin. In August, just before retiring, the military judge threw out confessions the defendant made at Guantánamo Bay in 2007 as tainted by torture. Prosecutors consider those statements key trial evidence and are appealing that decision.
The case currently has no date for the trial to begin. In August, just before retiring, the military judge threw out confessions the defendant made at Guantánamo Bay in 2007 as tainted by torture. Prosecutors consider those statements key trial evidence and are appealing that decision.
The case has been in pretrial proceedings since Mr. Nashiri’s arraignment in November 2011, in part because of higher court challenges by both the prosecution and defense lawyers to decisions by the case judges, and in part because two years of judicial rulings by an earlier judge were thrown out when he was found to have a conflict of interest. A major impediment has been the slow pace of disclosure to defense lawyers about the C.I.A. prison network, known as black sites, where the defendant was held for four years before his transfer to Guantánamo in September 2006. Hearings also were put on hiatus for more than 500 days because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The case has been in pretrial proceedings since Mr. Nashiri’s arraignment in November 2011, in part because of higher court challenges by both the prosecution and defense lawyers to decisions by the case judges, and in part because two years of judicial rulings by an earlier judge were thrown out when he was found to have a conflict of interest. A major impediment has been the slow pace of disclosure to defense lawyers about the C.I.A. prison network, known as black sites, where the defendant was held for four years before his transfer to Guantánamo in September 2006. Hearings also were put on hiatus for more than 500 days because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Seventeen sailors were killed in the attack: Kenneth E. Clodfelter, 21; Richard Costelow, 35; Lakeina M. Francis, 19; Timothy L. Gauna, 21; Cherone L. Gunn, 22; James R. McDaniels, 19; Marc I. Nieto, 24; Ronald S. Owens, 24; Labika N. Palmer, 22; Joshua L. Parlett, 19; Patrick H. Roy, 19; Kevin S. Rux, 30; Ronchester M. Santiago, 22; Timothy L. Saunders, 32; Gary G. Swenchonis Jr., 26; Andrew Triplett, 31, and Craig B. Wibberley, 19.
A liaison to the victims, who works for the prosecution, selects surviving crew members as well as family members of those who were killed in the attacks to observe the proceedings at Guantánamo Bay. Shipmates from that day and the parents of fallen sailors have become familiar faces in the gallery at the back of the court, where members of the public who gain admission to the national security court can watch the proceeding live and hear the audio on a 40-second delay. Family members and victims of the attack can also observe a video feed of the proceedings from a viewing room in Norfolk, Va., the home port of the Cole.
Lt. Col. Terrance J. Reese, a Marine, was assigned the case on Aug. 22, 2023. He previously served as a judge from 2017 to 2021 in Camp Lejeune and in Japan and is now based at the Navy Yard in Washington D.C. He is a 2005 graduate of Loyola Law School in New Orleans, where he studied as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps. Colonel Reese replaced Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr., an Army judge, who presided over some of the weightiest pretrial hearing issues, and ended three and a half years on the case by throwing out an alleged confession by the defendant as derived from the prisoner’s torture by the C.I.A.
Prior judges in the case were Col. James L. Pohl of the Army and then Col. Vance H. Spath of the Air Force, who had two years of rulings vacated, setting back the effort to get to trial, because Colonel Spath secretly sought employment with the Justice Department, which was prosecuting it.
Mr. Nashiri was born in 1965 in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. He was captured in Dubai in October 2002, and spent about 1,390 days as a “high-value detainee” in the custody of the Central Intelligence Agency, including in black site prisons in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay and Thailand. In C.I.A. custody, he was subjected to waterboarding, forced nudity, extreme isolation, sleep deprivation and other forms of abuse. Some were “enhanced interrogation techniques” devised by two psychologists under contract to the C.I.A. In 2006, he was returned to Guantánamo and transferred to U.S. military custody. In 2013, a panel of three Army doctors conducted a mental health assessment of Mr. Nashiri for the court and found that, while he experienced post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, he was fit to stand trial.
The lead prosecutor had been Mark A. Miller, an assistant U.S. attorney from the Justice Department who has been on the case since 2015. But he stepped down after differing with Biden administration policy about whether evidence derived from torture could be used in some aspects of the case. A deputy chief prosecutor, Michael J. O’Sullivan, stepped in as lead prosecutor in September 2022. Other prosecutors include two civilians, Edward R. Ryan of the Justice Department, who is also a key prosecutor on the five-defendant Sept. 11 case, and John B. Wells of the Defense Department; Lt. Col. James Garrett and Majs. Michael Ross and Stephen Romeo of the Army; and Capt. Jonathan R. Danielczyk of the Air Force.
Anthony J. Natale serves learned counsel, the term for an experienced capital defense lawyer. Mr. Natale previously represented the former U.S. “enemy combatant” Jose Padilla, who was convicted in federal court in Miami in 2007 and is held at the federal supermax prison in Colorado pending release in 2026. Other lawyers on the team include Lt. Cmdr. Alaric A. Piette of the Navy and Lt. Col. Joshua B. Nettinga of the Air Force and the civilians Katie Carmon, Annie W. Morgan and Joaquin E. Padilla.
The case’s longest serving defense lawyer had been Capt. Brian L. Mizer of the Navy. He was on the case for about a decade but was allowed to step down in September 2022 because prosecutors intend to use information from the early 2000s interrogations of another prisoner once represented by Captain Mizer, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, against Mr. Nashiri. The situation created a conflict for Captain Mizer who had to keep confidential conversations he had with Mr. Hamdan about his interrogations.
