Military Choose Proposes 2022 Trial in Guantánamo’s Cole Bombing Case

This article was created in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba – An army judge suggested Tuesday a hearing for a Saudi man's death sentence that was accused of staging the Qaida suicide attack on the American destroyer Cole, which killed 17 seafarers from Yemen two decades ago were.

The judge, Colonel Lanny J. Acosta Jr., included the date in a four-page decision that sets a number of time limits for pre-judicial litigation over the next two years. He issued an opinion to prosecutors and defense lawyers until March 31.

Saudi man Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, 55, is charged with murder against the destroyer on October 12, 2000, in violation of the war, terrorism and other war crimes law. It was carried out by two people. Suicide bombers who blew a bomb-laden boat along the Cole during a routine refueling stop in Aden, Yemen, blew themselves up.

imageAbd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was arrested by the United States in 2002.Recognition…ABC, via Associated Press

The United States arrested Mr. al-Nashiri in Dubai, UAE in 2002, and his case has been plagued by delays and complications since then, beginning with the decision to interrogate him and not in the CIA's secret overseas prison network Take him to a court in the United States. His lawyers have described him as a survivor of the torture at the agency's black locations.

In May 2003, when Mr. al-Nashiri was still in C.I.A. In custody, he was named an undefended co-conspirator in a terrorist case in southern New York City. However, the agency did not hand him over to the military authorities in Guantánamo Bay prison until September 2006. He was first officially charged in November 2011.

Last year, a federal appeals court invalidated pre-trial hearings for about two years because a former judge, Colonel Vance H. Spath, failed to disclose that while he was leading the case with a Justice Department prosecutor, the Department of Justice was negotiating with him for a civilian job as a judge at the Immigration Court.