The U.S. Defense Department announced Monday it formally charged a Saudi Arabian national held at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay with plotting the bombing of the USS Cole in October 200 in the Yemeni port of Aden.
The Pentagon said it charged Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri with eight charges associated with the suicide attack that wounded 47 U.S. Navy personnel and killed 17 others. The Pentagon considers Nashiri one of the “high value” detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, along with the self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammad.
“Five of the eight charges carry the maximum penalty of death,” said Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, a legal adviser to the tribunal system at Guantanamo.
U.S. officials say Nashiri was the chief of operations in the Arabian peninsula for al-Qaida. He apparently met with al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden during the course of his tenure.
Beyond the Cole bombings, U.S. prosecutors claim Nashiri coordinated failed attacks on the USS Sullivans in January 2000 and the French SS Limbrug in October 2002, both in the Gulf of Aden.
Officials with the CIA admitted to coercing Nashiri during interrogations using the controversial technique known as waterboarding. Nashiri confessed to the Cole bombing, but claims he did so only so CIA interrogators would stop torturing him. Hartmann said any challenges to testimony gleaned from the technique would be addressed during trial.
“All the evidentiary issues are going to be resolved in the courtroom. That is the beauty of this system,” he said. “We’ll leave that to the trial process.”
