Pentagon charges alleged plot organizer in Cole bombing

WASHINGTON

The Pentagon formally accused a Saudi Arabian, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, on Monday of murder, conspiracy and six other charges growing out of the October 2000 bombing of the Norfolk-based destroyer Cole in Aden, Yemen.

Five of the eight counts carry the death penalty.

The charges are the first filed in the United States in connection with the Cole bombing, which killed 17 sailors and wounded 47 others. A Yemeni court tried al-Nashiri in absentia in 2004 and sentenced him to death.

The case likely will test the legality of waterboarding, a controversial interrogation technique that simulates drowning. According to transcripts released last year, al-Nashiri has claimed that his confessions of involvement in several terrorist plots, including the Cole bombing, were made only because he was tortured.

Al-Nashiri has been in U.S. custody since 2002. The CIA has acknowledged that waterboarding was used in his questioning.

"The government... will be basing its prosecution on evidence obtained through torture," said Nancy Hollander, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who plans to assist in al-Nashiri's defense.

She added that the questioning and the military commission system to be used to handle the charges "clearly violate both U.S. law and the moral standards that are the foundation of our country."

Retired Navy Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, the Cole's skipper at the time of the attack, said Monday that he's confident the FBI has accumulated the evidence necessary to try and convict al-Nashiri.

The charges are "merely a first step in a long-overdue process of holding those terrorists who attacked USS Cole accountable," Lippold added.

Lorrie Triplett of Suffolk, who lost her husband, Andrew, in the attack, called the charges "good news," adding that "we still can't get our loved ones back."

Triplett said the Cole families are still waiting for payment from the government of Sudan after a federal judge in Norfolk found Sudan responsible for assisting al-Qa ida operatives in the Cole bombing. The families were awarded nearly $8 million combined.

Al-Nashiri, who is being held with other suspected terrorists at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was to be formally presented with the charges Monday afternoon, the Pentagon said.

An 11-page charge sheet released by the Pentagon claims that al-Nashiri began planning an attack on a Navy ship in Aden's harbor in August 1999.

According to the charge sheet, the original target was another destroyer, The Sullivans, but the attack fizzled when the terrorists' bomb-laden boat sank before it could reach the ship as it was refueling in Aden harbor on Jan. 3, 2000.

The boat and explosives were salvaged, and planning for another attempt continued through the year, coordinated by al-Nashiri and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, the charge sheet alleges.

The Cole was attacked as it refueled in the harbor on Oct. 12, 2000. Two men maneuvered a small boat alongside the Cole. Crew members believed the boat was there to pick up garbage from the ship. The men detonated the explosives, blowing a 40-foot hole in the side of the ship.

The counts against al-Nashiri also deal with an attack in October 2002 on a French supertanker, the Limburg, in the Gulf of Aden. A Bulgarian crew member on the Limburg was killed, and 90,000 barrels of oil were spilled into the gulf.

A special Defense Department official serving as the convening authority, or judge, still must decide if the charges are sufficient for trial and are appropriate for capital punishment under military law. If so, the charges will be referred to a 12-member commission of American military officers, said Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, the commission's legal adviser.

Hartmann said there is no deadline for the official, Susan Crawford, to act. If she refers the case for trial, al-Nashiri would have 30 days to enter a plea and the commission would be assembled within 120 days.

Lippold said Monday that he expects to attend at least some of the legal proceedings, which will be conducted in Guantanamo.

In Norfolk, the Navy's Fleet Forces Command announced that the military will arrange for some family members of the Cole's victims to be present. Space will not permit accommodations for all the families, the Navy said, but a closed-

circuit television feed to a site inside the United States will be available for those who do not make the trip.

"It has been nearly eight years since this attack, and we recognize that the ability to observe the justice process is an important element of bringing closure to these Navy families," said Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, a deputy chief of staff at the Fleet Forces Command.

Dale Eisman, (703) 913-9872, dale.eisman@pilotonline.com