GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba, Nov. 8, 2011 (Reuters) — Nine
years after his capture and a decade after the United States first
authorized military tribunals for terrorist suspects, the alleged
mastermind of the deadly bombing of the USS Cole will face a judge in
the Guantanamo war crimes tribunal.
The port side damage to the guided missile
destroyer USS Cole is pictured after a bomb attack during a refueling
operation in the port of Aden in this October 12, 2000 file photo.
REUTERS/Aladin Abdel Naby/Files
He is the first high-ranking al Qaeda figure to face charges at Guantanamo under the Obama administration and could face the death penalty if convicted. But attorneys expect it will be a year or two before the case goes to trial.
Nashiri is accused of conspiring with Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders to bomb U.S. targets, including embassies in Africa and ships in the Gulf of Aden.
In the attack on the Cole in October 2000, two suicide bombers in civilian garb waved at the crew and then drove their boat full of explosives into the side of the warship as it refueled in the Port of Aden. The blast tore a 30-foot (9 meter) hole in the ship, killing 17 U.S. sailors and wounding three dozen more.
Nashiri, described by U.S. investigators as al Qaeda's one-time head of operations in the Arabian Peninsula, is accused of planning and preparing the attack, choosing the suicide bombers and helping buy the boat and explosives.
He is accused of plotting similar boat-bomb attacks on another U.S. warship and a French oil tanker off Yemen. The January 2000 attack on the other warship, the USS The Sullivans, failed when the would-be suicide bombers ran their boat aground. The October 2002 attack on the tanker, the MV Limburg, killed a crewman and dumped 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.
Nashiri is also accused of providing a fake passport to a suspect in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
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