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.

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…

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.

Good morning from Camp Justice at Guantanamo Bay, where hearings on admissibility of hearsay continue in the USS Cole case. 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.

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.

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.

Today is Day 2 of Week 2 of the latest round of pretrial hearings mostly focused on hearsay evidence in the USS Cole case at Guantanamo Bay. Expect some medical testimony today. nytimes.com/article/uss-co… A Navy Commander doctor who serves as the prison's senior medical officer for the high value detainees (aka CIA black site prisoners) is testifying that he saw no records for the Cole defendant from his 2003-06 CIA detention.

Good morning on the start of Week 2 of pretrial hearings in the USS Cole case at Guantánamo Bay. We expect testimony from former NCIS agent Bob McFadden. Here was last week’s big takeaway.

nytimes.com/2023/02/24/us/… The hearing has begun with a new member of the prosecution, Ed Ryan of the Department of Justice, who has spent years on the 9/11 case. Our updated trial guide here nytimes.com/article/uss-co…

Good morning from Camp Justice at Guantanamo Bay. In court now, FBI agent Mary Sonnen is testifying that she has been unable to locate any 2000 era Yemeni witnesses whose testimony prosecutors seek to use as hearsay at the someday USS Cole capital trial.
nytimes.com/article/uss-co… This is the latest installment in the long-running hearsay hearings playing out in pretrial proceedings in the USS Cole case. Agent Sonnen is the current case agent assigned to work with war court prosecutors.
About the hearings...
nytimes.com/2022/10/29/us/…

Breaking: The U.S. military earlier today repatriated to Pakistan two brothers who had been held but never charged with crimes in their nearly 20 years at Guantánamo Bay.
nytimes.com/2023/02/23/us/… My sources tell me that U.S. forces turned them over to authorities in Pakistan about four hours ago. Guantánamo Bay prison now holds 32 men. Of them, 18 are cleared to go like the Rabbani brothers — with diplomatic agreements.

Big Breaking News here in Belize… nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/… Foreign Minister Courtnay just now: “Mr. Khan is not coming to Belize as a detainee. He has served his sentence and is a free man. He is being resettled on humanitarian grounds, just as our country has done for thousands of migrants and refugees throughout the years.”

Good morning from Camp Justice, Guantanamo Bay. We expect more pretrial testimony from the psychologist who waterboarded the USS Cole case defendant for the CIA in 2002. The witness is in a secret site in Virginia; the defendant has chosen not to attend. nytimes.com/article/uss-co… Defense lawyers have former CIA contract psychologist James Mitchell testifying for several legal motions that seek to suppress certain evidence from the USS Cole bombing trial, which has no start date.
Detainee abuse has been the theme since last week.
nytimes.com/2022/05/01/us/…

Good morning from Camp Justice at Guantanamo Bay for week 2 of these pretrial hearings in the USS Cole case. We expect testimony from former CIA contractor James Mitchell via classified link from the war court's northern chamber.
Last week's news... nytimes.com/2022/05/01/us/… About that northern chamber: The judge, an Army colonel and the chief of the Gitmo judiciary, has declared the facility inside an office building in Crystal City, Va., to be an extension of his Camp Justice courtroom.
The Pentagon set it up at the height of the pandemic.

News: The interagency review board has approved the transfer of Guantanamo’s youngest wartime detainee, a Yemeni man who was seized in Pakistan in 2002. Now U.S. diplomats need to find a nation to receive and rehabilitate him. nytimes.com/2022/04/26/us/… Now updated: Our indispensable online data base on the Guantanamo detainees -- those held and those released. nytimes.com/interactive/20…

Good morning from Camp Justice at Guantanamo Bay. The man accused of plotting the bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen in 2000 returns to court today for a brief administrative session. By my count, this is the only capital case pretrial hearing this year.
nytimes.com/2022/02/02/us/… That lasted 15 minutes. The prisoner acknowledged his right to miss some sessions. The judge announced the sides would hold a classified session to map out which testimony and arguments could be held in public, then recessed open court until tomorrow.
No public, no prisoner.

Good morning from Camp Justice, the war court compound at Guantanamo Bay. The hearing in the USS Cole case could start as early as tomorrow morning. No trial date has been set but here's my Who's Who guide: nytimes.com/2022/02/02/us/… Meantime, we wait for the base to approve a photo I took (under military escort) of a sign at the construction site for a new barracks at Guantanamo Bay. It is being built to house 848 Army guards and other troops assigned to the prison operation, which today holds 37 detainees.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers in the 9/11 case have wrapped up their first round of plea bargain talks -- and are headed back to the U.S. with topics that require wider government action. My dispatch from Guantanamo Bay on some of the issues, the scene. nytimes.com/2022/03/26/us/… Unresolved questions include whether, as convicts, the men can still be held in communal confinement and whether the Pentagon will provide civilian-run health care for victims of torture.

The U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, honors the service of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, March 22, 2022. Here was a wider shot I took today, which was also approved for release.

Update: The military judge has released the death-penalty defender Cheryl Bormann from the 9/11 case, according to people who've seen the 15-page ruling. The Pentagon has yet to release it. One source says the judge declined to abate the proceedings.
nytimes.com/2022/03/10/us/… Now the new chief defense counsel for war court cases, Army Brig. Gen. Jackie L. Thompson Jr., needs to hire a new learned counsel. General Thompson says there is no such qualified lawyer on the team of defendant Walid bin Attash. Hearings could resume as soon as May 9.

BREAKING: An eight-officer jury has handed down a 26-year sentence to this confessed Al Qaeda courier, starting from his February 2012 guilty plea.
It's symbolic. Defendant Majid Khan has a side deal with a senior Pentagon official for a shorter sentence.
nytimes.com/2021/10/28/us/… The jury panel was given a sentencing range of 25 to 40 years. Prosecutors had asked for the upper end. Defense lawyers asked for the lowest, 25 years, invoking the prisoner's torturous 2003-06 odyssey through the black sites and his contrition.

Good morning from Camp Justice at Guantanamo Bay. It is Day 2 of the sentencing hearing in the Majid Khan guilty plea case and we expect the eight-member panel of military officers (aka, The Jury) to deliberate today.
nytimes.com/2021/10/28/us/… They can sentence Mr. Khan to anywhere from 25 to 40 years, don't know that it is a formality. The 41-year-old man who has spent nearly half his life as a war prisoner has a deal with senior Pentagon official that could end the sentence in 2022, could let him go from Guantanamo.