On October 12, 2000, while the USS Cole was anchored off the port of Aden, Yemen, when a small boat filled with explosives pulled alongside the ship and the terrorists aboard, detonated their charges. The explosion ripped open a 40-by-40-foot hole in the ship's port side, killing 17 sailors and injuring another 39.
10 years later, the Obama administration has now set aside the prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind behind the suicide attack on the USS Cole.
In late August, the Justice Department filed a motion in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, stating that "no charges are either pending or contemplated with respect to al-Nashiri in the near future."
The statement was quietly hidden in a motion to dismiss a petition by Nashiri's attorneys, and of course, all but completely ignored by the mainstream press.
The move by the Obama administration to at least temporarily delay trial is a puzzling one since military prosecutors have been prepared to try Nashiri for months, and had planned to do so this past summer.
On June 30, 2008, Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann announced charges against Nashiri for “organizing and directing†the bombing plot, and that the Defense Department would seek the death penalty against the Saudi national.
Nashiri has been held at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay since 2006.
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