Accused USS Cole Bomber Charged

CNN reports:

Military prosecutors have recommended the death penalty for the accused mastermind of the deadly 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole.

The announcement Wednesday from the Defense Department is another signal the case against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri will be moving closer to trial before a military commission. As one of 16 "high value" detainees, he has been held for years at the U.S. Navy's detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. If approved this would be the first death-penalty trial in the reconfigured military trial system.

Intelligence sources have said al-Nashiri headed al Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf region before his 2002 capture by U.S. intelligence agents. CIA Director Michael Hayden confirmed six years later that al-Nashiri and two other high-value terror suspects were subjected to waterboarding, a harsh interrogation technique.

The chief prosecutor recommended capital charges against the 46-year-old Saudi native. He has been formally re-charged with planning the bombing attack on the U.S. Navy vessel, which was in the Gulf of Aden near Yemen.

Two suicide bombers rammed a garbage barge full of explosives into the USS Cole during a refueling stop. Seventeen sailors were killed, and 47 others were njured. The blast left a 40-by-40-foot hole in the port side of the Norfolk, Virginia-based guided-missile destroyer, which was carrying a crew of 293.

Al-Nashiri also is charged with heading the aborted attack on the destroyer USS Sullivans that same year.

The decision to formally move ahead with the prosecution had been expected for weeks, ever since Defense Secretary Robert Gates in January lifted a previous order that had prevented any new cases from moving forward.