Pentagon launches war court website

Carol Rosenberg McClatchyDC 09/28/2011 13:26

The Pentagon on Wednesday morning went live with a new, slicker interactive military commissions website — with no new information — ahead of a decision from a senior Defense Department official on whether to go forward with the first death penalty war crimes prosecution of the Obama administration.

Defense sources said retired Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald was still deciding how to go forward in the case of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, 46, a former Saudi millionaire accused of masterminding Al Qaida’s suicide bombing of a Navy destroyer off the coast of Yemen two decades ago.

Nashiri’s trial is bound to put a spotlight on both the CIA’s treatment of its captives and also on Navy security in October 2000 off Aden, Yemen, where the warship was on a refueling stop when two suicide bombers drove a bomb-laden skiff into the USS Cole. Seventeen American sailors were killed.

The $1.1 billion warship was crippled but subsequently rebuilt and calls Norfolk, Va., home when it’s not at sea.

Wednesday, the new website showed that prosecutors were still seeking a capitol murder trial in the case, in the latest version of their charge sheet from Sept. 15. But it did not include a July 15 filing by Nashiri’s defenders that argued that the case was too tainted by torture, delay and an untested process to go forward.

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