This article was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — A federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out more than two years of a military tribunal judge’s decisions in the case of the man accused of plotting the bombing of the destroyer Cole, finding that the jurist wrongly hid his pursuit of an immigration judge job while sitting on the war crimes case. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, 54, who has been in American custody since 2002, has been represented by military commission defense lawyers since 2008 and was formally charged in 2011. Mr. al-Nashiri, a Saudi, is accused of being the architect of Al Qaeda’s suicide bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole off Yemen on Oct. 12, 2000. The decision means a new military judge will have to revisit defense challenges to the charges, what evidence prosecutors must provide Mr. al-Nashiri’s lawyers and fundamental constitutional questions about the legality of the military commission system.

Source: New York Times April 17, 2019 01:01 UTC