Guantánamo Bay
Pre-trial hearings took place this month in the capital USS Cole bombing case involving Abd Al Nashiri. The hearings focused on how much hearsay evidence the judge is allowed to admit in the trial as many witnesses are unavailable for the trial of this attack on a US naval vessel which took place near Yemen in 2000. An FBI agent told the court that 20 years earlier Yemeni eyewitnesses had described the attack to investigators and identified Al Nashiri as being involved. However, “Confronted with the image on cross-examination, the former agent, Ammar Barghouty, said he was mistaken. The eyewitness had identified one of the suicide bombers, not Mr. Nashiri, as the tenant. [of property rented to the bombers]” As they cannot find the 100 or so Yemeni witnesses who provided the information at the time, the judge now has to decide whether FBI agents can testify what they were told instead. Many are now retired. The judge, Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr., must also decide which of the statements “are reliable enough to be presented to the military jury that will someday hear the death-penalty case.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/29/us/politics/uss-cole-bombing-case.html
Initial pre-trial hearings in the case of Indonesian prisoner Hambali and two Malaysian prisoners accused of involvement in the 2003 Bali bombing were due to take place in late October and early November but have been cancelled by the judge.
