This text was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Heart on Disaster Reporting.GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — An Military choose proposed on Tuesday a
This text was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Heart on Disaster Reporting.
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — An Military choose proposed on Tuesday a February 2022 trial date for the dying penalty tribunal of a Saudi man who’s accused of orchestrating the Qaeda suicide bombing of the American destroyer Cole that killed 17 sailors off Yemen twenty years in the past.
The choose, Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr., included the date in a four-page order that set out a sequence of deadlines for pretrial litigation over the following two years. He gave prosecutors and protection legal professionals till March 31 to supply remark.
The Saudi man, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, 55, is charged with homicide in violation of the regulation of warfare, terrorism and different warfare crimes for the assault on the destroyer on Oct. 12, 2000. It was carried out by two suicide bombers who sailed a bomb-laden skiff alongside the Cole throughout a routine refueling cease in Aden, Yemen, then blew themselves up.
The USA took custody of Mr. al-Nashiri in 2002 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and his case has been stricken by delays and issues since, beginning with a choice to interrogate him within the C.I.A.’s secret abroad jail community slightly than take him to a court docket in the USA. His legal professionals have described him as a survivor of torture within the company’s black websites.
In Could 2003, whereas Mr. al-Nashiri was nonetheless in C.I.A. custody, he was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism case within the Southern District of New York. However the company didn’t flip him over to navy authorities on the jail at Guantánamo Bay till September 2006. He was first formally charged in November 2011.
Final 12 months, a federal appeals court docket invalidated about two years of pretrial hearings within the case as a result of an earlier choose, Col. Vance H. Spath, did not disclose that whereas he was presiding over the case with a Justice Division prosecutor, he was negotiating with the Justice Division for a civilian job as an immigration court docket choose.