Trial in 2000 bombing case is delayed weeks before it was set to finally start

The trial in the bombing of the USS Cole has been indefinitely delayed, a new setback in a quarter-century-old case that has been shadowed by the CIA’s use of torture.

The military trial at the U.S. naval station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was scheduled to start June 1. But Col. Matthew Fitzgerald, the judge overseeing the case, announced the decision to postpone it last month without giving a specific reason.

He said the postponement would involve “months, not weeks.”

The suicide bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer on Oct. 12, 2000, killed 17 U.S. sailors and wounded dozens of others during a refueling stop in Yemen.

A Saudi prisoner, Abd-al Rahim al-Nashiri, is accused of orchestrating the attack, which was seen as a precursor of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Military judges in the Cole case have set and then abandoned about 10 proposed trial dates since Nashiri was first arraigned in 2011, nine years after he was captured.

Lawyers in court have cited several potential reasons for the judge delaying the start of trial.

Prosecutors are still working with the CIA and other intelligence agencies to declassify evidence for the public and defendant to see, rather than hold secret sessions of the trial. If the agencies refuse, the judge will need to decide how to proceed.

Some of the proposed evidence involves the agency’s torture of prisoners in the early 2000s. Nashiri, one of the first prisoners who was held in a CIA “black site” facility, was waterboarded, sleep deprived, kept nude and threatened with a drill and handgun in his early agency interrogations.

Defense lawyers for the defendant have proposed a delay until Jan. 11, 2027.

The June 1 date would have averted a conflict with the long-running case against four men who are accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks. Prosecutors had proposed the same Jan. 11, 2027 start date.

The new judge in that case, Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, has not ruled on that request.

Nashiri’s lead lawyer, Allison Miller, announced in court last month that she was still seeking to resolve the case with a plea agreement. Steve Feinberg, the deputy defense secretary, had previously rejected a plea offer, but Miller said a court staff member was clarifying which portions of the offer were obstacles to his approving the deal.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.