WASHINGTON: A military judge in Guantanamo Bay dismissed all charges against Saudi national Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri, accused of being a senior Al-Qaeda conspirator.
Al-Nashiri is accused of plotting the attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 US sailors in the Yemeni port city of Aden in 2000.
Judge Susan Crawford’s ruling brings the case into compliance with an order US President Barack Obama issued in his first week in office to suspend Guantanamo cases. The Obama administration could reinstate charges against Al-Nashiri at a later date.
The move avoided a showdown between the US military and Obama. It canceled a hearing that had been set for Monday in the Guantanamo war crimes court despite the fact Obama had ordered a freeze in proceedings there. Had the trial continued in defiance of Obama’s request, reinstatement of charges may not have been possible.
If the case had proceeded against Al-Nashiri, a guilty plea could have boxed in the administration. The legal principle of double jeopardy would apply, and it would have been very difficult to move his case to another court, according to defense attorneys.
The tactic was also used by the Bush administration when it wanted to stop various proceedings at Guantanamo. The Pentagon under Bush dismissed without prejudice charges in six cases and reinstated them later in three of those cases. Al-Nashiri’s case presents especially difficult problems for the Obama administration because he is one of three detainees held at Guantanamo who the CIA has admitted were subjected to waterboarding while in secret detention.
In response to Obama’s decision to close down the Guantanamo prison camp, Military Families United began circulating a pledge on Capitol Hill that asks members of Congress to reject the administration’s efforts to relocate any war-on-terrorism detainees to their districts.
Obama’s order instructs Attorney General Eric Holder to lead an oversight effort that figures out which detainees could be sent overseas, and which could be brought to the United States for trials.
Also, newspapers reported yesterday that three senior Pentagon officials hired by the Bush administration to oversee detainee policy at Guantanamo Bay remain on the job despite Obama’s order to reverse course.
The Bush appointees’ ongoing influence over one of Obama’s first and most sensitive national security decisions raises questions by critics — within and outside the Pentagon — about whether those who championed the controversial Guantanamo military court system can now be depended upon to help shut it down.
Until Thursday, the senior judge in charge of terrorist trials at Guantanamo had stalled in enforcing Obama’s demand to halt all court proceedings for the estimated 245 terror suspects held there. Crawford is a Bush political appointee.
Two other officials, working in the Pentagon’s detainee policy office, have been shunted into civil service jobs. As a result, they cannot be summarily fired because of the change in presidential administrations.
