The Pentagon’s senior judge overseeing terror trials at Guantanamo Bay dropped charges on Thursday against an al-Qaeda suspect in the 2000 USS Cole bombing, upholding US President Barack Obama’s order to freeze military tribunals there.
The charges against suspected al-Qaeda bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri marked the last active Guantanamo war crimes case.
The legal move by Susan Crawford, the top legal authority for military trials at Guantanamo, brings all cases into compliance with Obama’s Jan. 22 executive order to halt terrorist court proceedings at the US Navy base in Cuba.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Crawford withdrew the charges against al-Nashiri. However, new charges may be brought again later, and al-Nashiri will remain in prison for the time being.
“It was her decision, but it reflects the fact that the president has issued an executive order which mandates that the military commissions be halted, pending the outcome of several reviews of our operations down at Guantanamo,” Morrell said late on Thursday night.
The ruling also gives the White House time to review the legal cases of all 245 terror suspects held there and decide whether they should be prosecuted in the US or released to other nations.
Obama was expected to meet with families of USS Cole and Sept. 11 victims at the White House yesterday afternoon to announce the move.
Seventeen US sailors died on Oct. 12, 2000, when al-Qaeda suicide bombers steered an explosives-laden boat into the Cole, a guided-missile destroyer, as it sat in a Yemen port.
The Pentagon last summer charged al-Nashiri, a Saudi Arabian, with “organizing and directing” the bombing and planned to seek the death penalty in the case.
In his Jan. 22 order, Obama promised to shut down the Guantanamo prison within a year. The order also froze all Guantanamo detainee legal cases pending a three-month review as the Obama administration decides where — or whether — to prosecute the suspects who have been held there for years, most without charges.
Two military judges granted Obama’s request for a delay in other cases.
But a third military judge, Army Colonel James Pohl, defied Obama’s order by scheduling a Feb. 9 arraignment for al-Nashiri at Guantanamo. That left the decision on whether to continue to Crawford, whose delay on announcing what she would do prompted widespread concern at the Pentagon that she would refuse to follow orders and allow the court process to continue.
Retired Navy Commander Kirk Lippold, the commanding officer of the Cole when it was bombed in Yemen, said he will be among family members of Cole and Sept. 11 victims who were meeting with Obama at the White House yesterday afternoon.
Groups representing victims’ families were angered by Obama’s order, charging they had waited too long already to see the alleged attackers brought to court.
“We have already waited eight years. Justice delayed is justice denied. We must allow the military commission process to go forward,” Lippold, now a defense adviser to Military Families United, said in an interview on Thursday night.
Crawford was in the news last month when she said interrogation methods used on one suspect at Guantanamo amounted to torture. The Bush administration had maintained it did not torture.
Last year, al-Nashiri said during a Guantanamo hearing that he confessed to helping plot the Cole bombing only because he was tortured by US interrogators. The CIA has admitted he was among terrorist suspects subjected to waterboarding, which simulates drowning, in 2002 and 2003 while being interrogated in secret CIA prisons.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS