3e:null 3f:["$","title",null,{"children":"Key Moments in the USS Cole Case | Just Security | Observable"}] 45:T3bf2,const data = { "title": "Key Moments in the USS Cole Case", "eras": [ { "id": "origins", "label": "Origins and the Attack", "span": "1965–2001" }, { "id": "custody", "label": "9/11 and CIA Custody", "span": "2001–2006" }, { "id": "charges", "label": "Charges and False Starts", "span": "2007–2014" }, { "id": "turmoil", "label": "A Case in Turmoil", "span": "2017–2023" }, { "id": "trial", "label": "The Road to Trial", "span": "2025–2026" } ], "events": [ { "date": "January 1965", "era": "origins", "key": false, "html": "Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the defendant, is born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia." }, { "date": "1980s", "era": "origins", "key": false, "html": "He travels abroad to join the jihad, first in Chechnya and Tajikistan and then in Afghanistan to fight with the Mujahideen against the Soviets, according to a CIA profile." }, { "date": "1998", "era": "origins", "key": false, "html": "Al-Nashiri joins al-Qaeda." }, { "date": "Aug. 7, 1998", "era": "origins", "key": false, "html": "Al-Qaeda bombs U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing more than 220 people." }, { "date": "January 2000", "era": "origins", "key": false, "html": "An al-Qaeda plot to attack USS The Sullivans, a U.S. Navy destroyer refueling in Aden, Yemen, hits a snag and is never realized. Al-Nashiri is alleged to have played a key role in the plot." }, { "date": "Oct. 12, 2000", "era": "origins", "key": true, "html": "Suicide bombers attack the USS Cole warship in Aden Harbor, killing 17 U.S. sailors." }, { "date": "June 2001", "era": "origins", "key": false, "html": "An al-Qaeda recruiting video emerges claiming responsibility for the USS Cole bombing." }, { "date": "Sept. 11, 2001", "era": "custody", "key": false, "html": "Al-Qaeda terrorists hijack four commercial passenger airplanes to carry out attacks against the United States, including the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon." }, { "date": "Sept. 17, 2001", "era": "custody", "key": false, "html": "President George W. Bush signs a classified memorandum authorizing the CIA to undertake a covert program to kidnap and imprison so-called “high-value” terrorists." }, { "date": "Sept. 18, 2001", "era": "custody", "key": false, "html": "Bush signs into law the Authorization for Use of Military Force that becomes the basis of a global war on al-Qaeda and, in time, other affiliated groups. That authorization provides the domestic legal basis for the detention of detainees from that war without trial or conviction until hostilities end." }, { "date": "Oct. 6, 2002", "era": "custody", "key": false, "html": "An al-Qaeda suicide bombing of the French-flagged supertanker MV Limburg off the coast of Yemen kills a Bulgarian crew member, a civilian. Al-Nashiri allegedly organizes this attack as well." }, { "date": "October 2002", "era": "custody", "key": false, "html": "Al-Nashiri is captured in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, by local security forces and transferred to U.S. custody. He is taken to a CIA prison in Afghanistan." }, { "date": "Late 2002 to early 2003", "era": "custody", "key": false, "html": "CIA contractors hold al-Nashiri in a black site in Thailand and subject him to a full range of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including waterboarding, to try to get him to identify al-Qaeda members and any ongoing plots." }, { "date": "Late 2003 to early 2004", "era": "custody", "key": false, "html": "Al-Nashiri is held incommunicado at a CIA site at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, apart from the hundreds of military prisoners there. He is flown away before the U.S. Supreme Court decides detainees there are entitled to see lawyers." }, { "date": "2003 to 2006", "era": "custody", "key": false, "html": "The CIA moves al-Nashiri between seven different U.S.-run secret prisons, including in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania." }, { "date": "September 2006", "era": "custody", "key": false, "html": "President George W. Bush announces 14 prisoners have been transferred from CIA custody to military detention at the Guantanamo base, including people “responsible for the attack on the USS Cole.”" }, { "date": "Early 2007", "era": "charges", "key": false, "html": "Federal agents assigned to a “clean team” question al-Nashiri from Jan. 31 to Feb. 2 at the former black site in Guantanamo. He is not given a Miranda Warning and does not see a lawyer." }, { "date": "February 2008", "era": "charges", "key": false, "html": "CIA Director Michael Hayden discloses that al-Nashiri was waterboarded by CIA interrogators." }, { "date": "May 2008", "era": "charges", "key": false, "html": "Al-Nashiri meets defense lawyers for the first time, first federal public defenders for his habeas corpus petition, then private practitioner and later U.S. government defense lawyers, both civilian and military." }, { "date": "June 2008", "era": "charges", "key": false, "html": "A Pentagon prosecutor charges al-Nashiri with \"organizing and directing\" the bombing of the USS Cole and says the prosecution team will seek the death penalty." }, { "date": "Jan. 20, 2009", "era": "charges", "key": false, "html": "President Barack Obama takes office, suspends the military tribunals to reconsider where Guantanamo detainees who can be prosecuted should be tried." }, { "date": "February 2009", "era": "charges", "key": false, "html": "The Pentagon official overseeing the tribunal system withdraws the charges, without prejudice, to comply with Obama’s order and avert an arraignment." }, { "date": "Nov. 13, 2009", "era": "charges", "key": false, "html": "Attorney General Eric Holder announces that following a review he has declined to prosecute the Cole bombing case in federal court and refers the case back to the Department of Defense." }, { "date": "September 2011", "era": "charges", "key": false, "html": "Pentagon prosecutors file new charges against al-Nashiri after the system at Guantanamo is reformed under the Military Commissions Act of 2009." }, { "date": "Nov. 9, 2011", "era": "charges", "key": false, "html": "In his first court appearance, al Nashiri is arraigned at the military commission courtroom." }, { "date": "May 6, 2012", "era": "charges", "key": false, "html": "A U.S. drone strike in Yemen kills Fahd Mohammad Ahmed al-Quso, described as a key mastermind and conspirator in the USS Cole bombing." }, { "date": "March 28, 2013", "era": "charges", "key": false, "html": "A military medical board concludes that al-Nashiri has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression in litigation over his ability to stand trial and his lawyers’ effort to uncover evidence that could mitigate the government’s proposed death sentence, should he be convicted." }, { "date": "April 2014", "era": "charges", "key": false, "html": "The case’s first military judge, Army Col. James Pohl, orders prosecutors to turn over to defense lawyers a detailed account of the defendant’s detention and interrogation by the CIA, a process of discovery that will take years. Defense lawyers had argued the information was essential for mitigation in a capital trial." }, { "date": "October 2017", "era": "turmoil", "key": false, "html": "Defense lawyers resign en masse declaring an ethical conflict over government interference. It is later revealed that they found a listening device in their attorney-client meeting room, but were forbidden to tell the defendant, because the fact of the government eavesdropping was classified information." }, { "date": "Nov. 1, 2017", "era": "turmoil", "key": false, "html": "The second military judge to oversee the case, Air Force Col. Vance Spath, sentences Brig. Gen John Baker, a Marine lawyer in charge of the Guantanamo defense teams, to three weeks confinement at Guantanamo Bay for refusing to order the al-Nashiri defense lawyers back to work. A Pentagon official suspends Baker’s sentence two days later." }, { "date": "May 2018", "era": "turmoil", "key": false, "html": "The European Court of Human Rights orders Romania to pay al-Nashiri €100,000 for its role in his extraordinary rendition to a CIA site there." }, { "date": "June 2018", "era": "turmoil", "key": false, "html": "A federal judge vacates General Baker’s contempt conviction." }, { "date": "October 2018", "era": "turmoil", "key": false, "html": "Judge Spath, now retired from the military, is hired by the Justice Department as an immigration judge, an undisclosed transition that leads to a higher court conflict of interest ruling. His al-Nashiri case rulings from November 2015 to February 2018 are vacated." }, { "date": "January 2019", "era": "turmoil", "key": false, "html": "A U.S. airstrike kills Jamal al Badawi in Yemen; he is described by the U.S. military as a “USS Cole bombing operative.\"" }, { "date": "February 2019", "era": "turmoil", "key": false, "html": "A third judge, Army Col. Lanny Acosta Jr. takes over the USS Cole bombing case with a new reconstituted defense team." }, { "date": "2020 to 2021", "era": "turmoil", "key": false, "html": "The COVID pandemic shuts down the proceedings in the case for 600 days, paralyzing nearly all litigation and trial preparation." }, { "date": "2022 to 2023", "era": "turmoil", "key": false, "html": "Judge Acosta holds evidentiary hearings on al-Nashiri’s time in CIA detention, including medical testimony on the defendant’s “rectal rehydration,” eyewitness testimony that he was too small for the waterboard, and a demonstration by a defense lawyer on how the CIA used claustrophobic confinement." }, { "date": "Aug. 18, 2023", "era": "turmoil", "key": false, "html": "Judge Acosta suppresses the defendant’s 2007 interrogations as involuntary self-incrimination, finds that al-Nashiri’s P.T.S.D. was never treated and that it is likely related to his abuse in CIA custody." }, { "date": "Jan. 30, 2025", "era": "trial", "key": false, "html": "The military commission's appeals panel upholds Judge Acosta’s suppression of al-Nashiri’s confession; in time prosecutors decide to not seek civilian review." }, { "date": "Oct. 12, 2025", "era": "trial", "key": false, "html": "The twenty-fifth anniversary of the attack on the USS Cole passes with little attention paid to it." }, { "date": "February 2026", "era": "trial", "key": false, "html": "President Donald Trump claims the Iranian government had some responsibility for the Cole bombing as part of his justification for attacking Iran." }, { "date": "May 2026", "era": "trial", "key": false, "html": "After setting and abandoning several dates, Col. Matthew Fitzgerald, the fourth military judge in the case, sets jury selection for Oct. 19, 2026." }, { "date": "July 2026", "era": "trial", "key": false, "html": "The European Court of Human Rights finds Lithuania violated al-Nashiri's rights during the period in 2005 and 2006 when he was held at a CIA black site there and awards him €40,000." }, { "date": "August 2026", "era": "trial", "key": false, "html": "Defense lawyers obtain a security clearance for a forensic psychiatrist to examine al-Nashiri. After eight hours of interviews and tests the expert declares the defendant not competent to stand trial." }, { "date": "Sept. 16, 2026", "era": "trial", "key": false, "html": "Judge Fitzgerald orders a military psychiatrist to conduct an independent Sanity Board for the defendant with a deadline of Oct. 16, three days before jury selection is to start in the first capital trial at Guantanamo Bay." } ] };46:T2669,const timeline = (() => { // ---- USS Cole case timeline (Just Security) ---- // Expects a `data` object: { title, eras: [{id,label,span}], events: [{date, era, key, html}] } const P = "jsct"; // class prefix keeps styles from leaking into the WordPress theme const root = document.createElement("section"); root.className = P; root.setAttribute("aria-labelledby", P + "-title"); const css = ` @import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Noto+Serif:wght@500;700&family=Roboto:wght@400;500;700&display=swap'); .${P}{--teal:#115d72;--space:#04151F;--onyx:#494E51;--iron:#6B6E70;--gray:#929396;--plat:#EFF1F3;--salt:#F7F9F9;--linen:#FFF0E5; 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