Alleged USS Cole Mastermind Charged

WASHINGTON, June 30, 2008— -- The Pentagon has charged a Guantanamo Bay detainee with planning and participating in the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole.

The U.S. military claims that Saudi 'Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri masterminded the plot in which two men appearing to be civilians piloted their small boat toward the Cole in the Port of Aden, Yemen, and detonated explosives hidden inside the vessel.

The attack killed 17 sailors, wounded another 47 and left a 40-foot hole in the side of the ship.

The charges say al-Nashiri met with Osama bin Laden to reorganize and plot the Cole attack after a similar plot against the USS the Sullivans failed in January 2000.

Al-Nashiri allegedly made arrangements to rent homes near the gulf for surveillance, purchased the small boat and explosives used in the attack, and assigned the two men who apparently carried out the bombing.

The charges also implicate al-Nashiri in an October 2002 attack on a French oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden, which killed one of the ship's crewmembers and caused the spillage of an estimated 90,000 barrels of oil.

In November 2002, al-Nashiri was captured and held in CIA custody overseas until he and several other high-value detainees were moved to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in September 2006.

CIA Director Michael Hayden told Congress in February that CIA agents used the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding during interrogations of al-Nashiri and two others, alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and top al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah.

Questions have been raised about whether classified evidence gathered from the waterboarding interrogations might be tainted. At his enemy combatant hearing last year, al-Nashiri told a military panel that he confessed to helping plot the attack on the Cole only because he had been subjected to torture by interrogators.

Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann, who announced the charges against al-Nashiri and is the legal advisor to the Convening Authority in the Office of Military Commissions, said any evidence presented by prosecutors would be reviewed for relevance at trial, just as it would for any other trial.

"We will look at the evidence, all of the evidence that is associated with the case," Hartmann said. While there has been an admission that there was waterboarding, there may well be other evidence in the case. It's not necessarily the only form of evidence in the case."

Ultimately if the charges in al-Nashiri's case are referred to during the trial it will be up to the presiding judge to determine which classified evidence provided by prosecutors should be presented to the jury. At that point, Hartmann said, "all of the evidence will come in and it will be evaluated by the defense, by the prosecution and by the judge. ... There are no secrets."

Al-Nashiri is now the 20th Guantanamo detainee charged with crimes against the United States. Earlier this month, Mohammed and five others made their first court appearances before the inaugural military commissions at Guantanamo Bay.