Legal News

Gov?t Seeks Death for Saudi Charged With USS Cole Bombing

By Dan Slater

While things are looking up for Huzaifa Parhat, another Gitmo resident, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi of Yemeni descent, got some tough news today when the Pentagon said it’s charging Nashiri with “organizing and directing” the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, and will seek the death penalty.

The damage sustained on the port side of the USS Cole after a bomb exploded on Oct. 12, 2000, during a refueling operation in the port of Aden, Yemen. (Credit: Associated Press/U.S. Navy)

According to Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, the legal adviser to the U.S. military tribunal, the charges, which still must be approved by a Defense Department official who oversees military tribunals, include conspiracy to violate laws of war, murder, treachery, terrorism, destruction of property and intentionally causing serious bodily injury.

Seventeen American sailors were killed and dozens wounded when the Navy destroyer was attacked in the Yemeni port of Aden as it refueled. Nashiri is also accused of a role in the Oct. 6, 2002, suicide attack on the Limburg, a French oil tanker, Hartmann said. The attack killed a Bulgarian crew member and spilled 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.

Last year, at a Gitmo hearing, Nashiri confessed to helping plot the Cole bombing only because he was tortured by U.S. interrogators. The CIA conceded that Nashiri was among terrorist suspects subjected to waterboarding in 2002 and 2003.

“We will look at the evidence, all of the evidence that is associated with the case,” Hartmann said. “While there has been an admission that there was waterboarding, there may well be other evidence in the case. That’s not . . . necessarily the only part of evidence in the case.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 30, 2008 (boomark / email).