Carol Rosenberg Profile picture
Oct 2, 2021 9 tweets 2 min read Read on X
It’s pack-out day from Guantánamo Bay following the longest classified hearing in the tenure of military commissions — a secret two-week fact-finding on hidden microphones and allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
The war court is closed until an Oct. 27 sentencing hearing for an Al Qaeda courier turned government informant. Backstory: nytimes.com/2021/05/14/us/…
Meantime we are more than 550 days into the pandemic and a senior soldier in battle dress just climbed aboard a closed, air conditioned bus, yanked down his mask and shouted an announcement onto masked court travelers: Remain inside if you want AC.
Gitmo mix and masking: Civilian ferry operator just ordered passengers walking onto the open-air landing craft unit to traverse the bay to don masks before climbing aboard. Court support staff complied.
Oops. We are riding the routine ferry across Guantanamo Bay, not the LCN. The skipper just reminded the airstrip bound war court shuttle passengers to keep their mask on during the journey.
Today’s war court shuttle, a United charter, may actually get out of Guantánamo Bay a bit early. The Army judge just slipped into First Class. The military commissions’ chalk-masters are counting and re-counting heads on this mostly empty plane.
The military commissions shuttle from Guantánamo carrying the chief judge, Army Col. Lanny Acosta, USSCole case prosecutor John Wells and defense lawyer Capt. Brian Mizer has landed Andrews airbase near DC following…
…eight days of secret hearings that called 60+ secret witnesses, most testifying by video link from a secret courtroom annex in Virginia. The judge has asked for closing arguments in writing — hopefully with an unclassified version to cast a bit of sunshine on the proceedings.
This two-thirds empty United charter got an early departure from the base, in between a Coast Guard air mission and a medical evacuation of an unknown resident aboard a LearJet that’s based in Fort Lauderdale.

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More from @carolrosenberg

Mar 5
Good morning from Camp Justice at Guantanamo Bay on Day 2 of Week 4 of these pretrial hearings. Prosecutors are calling a team member, FBI analyst Kimberly Waltz, to testify about these intercepts.
nytimes.com/2019/03/25/us/…
There's a U.S. government "protective order" on the super secret source of the material. So after prosecutors finish questioning her, they decide what questions defense lawyers are allowed to ask her. Court begins at 0900.
Now released on the war court website...
The Feb. 20th and 21st transcripts of Dr. James E. Mitchell's testimony on the psychological theory of "fear extinction." There are a few redactions but it is mostly intact. Image
Read 38 tweets
Jun 30, 2023
Good morning from Camp Justice for this final day of a three-week pretrial hearing in the USS Cole case. The judge retires Sept. 30 and had earlier said he planned to leave the bench in August. We await word on whether this is his last day at Guantanamo Bay.
About the case, including the judge. He is the third to preside at Guantanamo since arraignment in 2011.
nytimes.com/article/uss-co…
Today we expect closing arguments on a question that has been a topic of periodic hearings since February 2022: Whether prosecutors can use at trial accounts of what the defendant told US interrogators and a military panel d at Gitmo in early 2007. No trial date is set.
Read 52 tweets
Jun 26, 2023
Good morning from Camp Justice, the war court compound at Guantanamo Bay. This is Day 1 of Week 3 of these hearings in the USS Cole bombing case. We may hear this morning more about last week's big revelation: Prosecutors suddenly found 2007 videotapes. nytimes.com/2023/06/21/us/…
A prosecutor says some as-yet undisclosed videos show Gitmo guards forcing the USS Cole case defendant from his cell to an undisclosed destination. One shows guards cutting shackles from the prisoner's ankles days before federal interrogations that his lawyers want suppressed.
The videos are so secret that even the judge can't have a copy. A prosecutor said that after something is done to the videos, sounds like something or somebody is obscured, then they can show them in a secret session to the defense lawyers and the judge. Maybe this week.
Read 11 tweets
Apr 19, 2023
Good morning from Camp Justice at Guantanamo Bay, where hearings on admissibility of hearsay continue in the USS Cole case. Image
We had some testimony yesterday from a former agent who said that, based on a document he signed in 2002, a prisoner told him they heard something from somebody else. This kind of thing is allowed at the war court, if a military judge lets it in. Image
Court is in session. The judge, Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr., just announced that he has now applied to be chief of court of the Air Force Trial Judiciary after he retires from the Army later this year. He sees no conflict. "If I felt there was any issue I would not have applied."
Read 5 tweets
Apr 18, 2023
At Guantanamo's war court now: The former FBI agent Ali Soufan is testifying, via video feed, about his post 9/11 investigation of Al Qaeda in Yemen in 2002 -- and what a prisoner there told him he had heard from other people about the whereabouts of the USS Cole defendant.
The prisoner who Mr. Soufan interviewed has been dead since 2011. His name is Abdulaziz Bin Attash, and is the brother of a 9/11 defendant in Guantanamo's other death-penalty case. Some witnesses in the Cole case are dead. Others cant be found. These are the hearsay hearings.
Mr. Soufan's memory is fuzzy on some details. Sometimes lawyers prompt him with his FBI FD 302s. Sometimes they prompt him with his book, Black Banners. He said he questioned prisoners in Guantanamo in January-February 2001, oops, 2002.
Read 12 tweets
Feb 28, 2023
In court now, Nashiri defense lawyer Anthony Natali reports that the prisoner is having intestinal issues and will be in the cell out back listening on a headset and watching on a video.
Those systems were broken at the Hadi hearing earlier this month.
In court now, the judge is hearing argument about a defense challenge to over-redactions of transcripts of public sessions.
The judge calls the issue "wholesale redactions," but says he's heard that there are new reviews underway.
He asks Prosecutor Maj. Michael Ross if there has been "massive corrections to the massive over-redactions that occurred."
Major Ross: There are changes. More are coming.
Read 5 tweets

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