Pentagon: Alleged Terrorist Prosecution

The 11-page charge sheets, signed by a Marine major, accuse Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, 43, of conspiracy, murder and other law of war violations.

MIAMI (MCT) - The Pentagon on Monday announced a proposed death penalty prosecution of a Saudi man at Guantanamo, alleging he organized the October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole off Aden, Yemen, that killed 17 American sailors.

The 11-page charge sheets, signed by a Marine major, accuse Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, 43, of conspiracy, murder and other law of war violations.

It seeks to try him by military commission at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba and execute him if he is convicted.

Nashiri is accused of testing explosives and equipping what looked like a small civilian garbage barge with bombs. The barge, piloted by two al-Qaida bombers who died in the explosion, pulled up next to the American destroyer on Oct. 12, 2000.

"The two men allegedly made friendly gestures to several crew members aboard the ship before detonating explosives concealed within their boat," a Pentagon statement said.

In September 2006, after President Bush ordered Nashiri's transfer from secret CIA custody to Guantanamo, the White House described the Mecca-born captive as "al Qaeda's operations chief in the Arabian Peninsula."

The CIA subsequently confirmed it subjected him to a regime of waterboarding to extract his confession while he was held in secret overseas detention after his capture in 2002.

In March 2007, according to a partially censored Pentagon transcript, Nashiri told U.S. military officers at Guantanamo that he concocted the confession to please his captors. "From the time I was arrested five years ago, they have been torturing me," he said then.

The Saudi becomes the 20th Guantanamo detainee facing war crimes charges and the seventh facing possible execution if convicted.

A 21st detainee, David Hicks of Australia, pleaded guilty to providing material support for terror as an al-Qaida foot soldier in Afghanistan during the U.S. invasion. Hicks served nine months and is free in his homeland.

Nashiri's charge sheet lists the 17 U.S. sailors who were killed in the attack, which blew a 40-foot hole in the side of the state-of-the-art U.S warship, severely damaging it.

An appendix not released Monday named 47 others who were wounded.

The charge sheet also alleges that Nashiri set the stage for the Cole bombing by testing an earlier, ill-fated attack on the USS Sullivans, also in Aden, on Jan. 3, 2000.

He is accused of recovering the boat that did not explode alongside the Sullivans, and retrofitting it for the two suicide bombers in the Cole attack.

At a Pentagon news conference Monday afternoon, the general overseeing the trials said that Nashiri allegedly answered to al-Qaida chieftain Osama bin Laden and traveled to Afghanistan to organize the plot.

"Mr. al Nashiri is charged with organizing and directing the attacks," said Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, who in his capacity as war court "legal adviser" will study the charge sheet and could suggest changes.

Hartmann said the charges were the result of a collaboration among the Departments of Justice, Defense and "a multitude of government agencies."

Among those killed in the blast was Seaman Cherone Gunn, then 22, less than a year in the U.S. Navy and on his first sea tour.

The attack tore through the galley where Gunn was eating an early lunch before going to work on the bridge.

"I want justice. I want it to be swift justice," said his elder brother Anton J. Gunn, 35, by telephone from in Columbia, S.C., after learning of the charges from a news reporter seeking comment.

Neither the FBI nor the Pentagon had contacted his family he said, and he was surprised to learn of the latest suspect. The FBI had earlier told victim families, he said, that the conspirators were alternately in prison in Yemen, escaped or had been set free.

"I'm not happy about the death penalty," added Gunn, a Democrat running for the South Carolina State House. "I would rather they suffer in prison and remember what they did to my family and 16 other families than to die and give them what they want. If they are members of al-Qaida and terrorists, then they want to die in a jihad."

Moreover, he said even if his brother was a sailor whose U.S. warship was attacked, the men should be tried "in federal court so I could go and see the proceedings."

He proposed having the trial in Virginia, a five-hour drive away "where the Cole was stationed. It shouldn't be in Guantanamo Bay or Yemen or some faraway place where we can't face the people who are accused of murdering my brother and his shipmates."

The charge sheets also accuse Nashiri of a role in an Oct. 6, 2002, on the SS Limburg, a French super-tanker, in the Gulf of Aden. A crew member was killed and nearly 90,000 barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf, the charge sheet said.

Hartmann said it is the job of the Pentagon's chief defense counsel, Army Col. Steve David, to assign Nashiri a military lawyer.

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Nashiri can also hire a civilian lawyer "at no expense to the government," the general said.

Nashiri's war court charges also include providing material support for terror, terrorism, destruction of property and using treachery and perfidy. They are signed by Marine Maj. Jeffrey Groharing, a military prosecutor in other Guantanamo war court cases.

Under the Pentagon's procedures, a political appointee named Susan Crawford, who is called "the convening authority," will study the charge sheets. It is her role to decide which portions to approve, and whether and how to allow the case to move forward.

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© 2008, The Miami Herald.