Military tribunal charges Saudi in Cole bombing

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By Pauline Jelinek

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon said Monday it is charging a Saudi Arabian with "organizing and directing" the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole - and will seek the death penalty.

Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, legal adviser to the U.S. military tribunal system, said charges are being sworn against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi of Yemeni descent, who has been held at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2006.

The charges still must be approved by a Defense Department official who oversees military tribunals set up for terrorism suspects. If they are approved, Mr. al-Nashiri will be the first person charged in the United States in connection with the attack nearly eight years ago.

Brig. Gen. Hartmann said the allegations include conspiracy to violate laws of war, murder, treachery, terrorism, destruction of property and intentionally causing serious bodily injury.

Seventeen American sailors were killed and dozens wounded when the Navy destroyer was attacked in the Yemeni port of Aden as it refueled.

Mr. al-Nashiri is also accused of a role in the Oct. 6, 2002, suicide attack on the Limburg, a French oil tanker, Brig. Gen. Hartmann said. The attack killed a Bulgarian crew member and spilled 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.

Mr. al-Nashiri told a hearing at Guantanamo Bay last year that he confessed to helping plot the Cole bombing only because he was tortured by U.S. interrogators.

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said early this year that Mr. al-Nashiri was among terrorist suspects subjected to waterboarding in 2002 and 2003 while being interrogated in secret CIA prisons.

Asked at a Pentagon press conference if evidence obtained from the waterboarding is tainted, Brig. Gen. Hartmann said that would be considered at any trial.

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

According to U.S. intelligence, Mr. al-Nashiri was tasked by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to attack the Cole, and also was al Qaeda's operations chief in the Arabian Peninsula until he was caught in 2002.

At his hearing last year, Mr. al-Nashiri acknowledged meeting with bin Laden many times and received as much as a half million dollars. The money, he said, was used for personal expenses, including for marriage and business deals.

Another one of the alleged masterminds in the Cole bombing - Jamal al-Badawi - was convicted in 2004 in Yemen of plotting, preparing and helping carry out the attack. He is wanted by the FBI, but Yemeni officials have said it is against their constitution to hand him over to the U.S.