Judge in 9/11 case to retire

MIAMI— In another set back to progress toward atrial, the long-serving Army judge in the Sept. 11 case announced Monday that he will retire Sept. 30 and assigned a Marine colonel who has been a military judge for three years toreplace him, effective immediately.

In his notice filed at the Office of Military Commissions, Army Col. James L. Pohl said he has chosen to “leave active duty after 38 years. To be clear, this was my decision and not impacted by any outside influence from any source.”

Col. Pohl assigned Marine Col. Keith A. Parrella, 44, who handles court-martial cases at Camp Lejeune, N.C., to replace him.

Mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged accomplices are accused of conspiring with the hijackers who killed 2,976 people on Sept. 11, 2001, and could face military execution if they are convicted.

But it has been six years since the suspects were arraigned. The Guantanamo case still has no trial date as Col. Pohl and now Col. Parrella sift through pretrial motions at the court that President George W. Bush created after the 9/ 11 attacks. To catch up, Col. Parrella will need to read six years of motions, more than 20,000 pages of pretrial transcripts and a classified record whose size is not known.

Col. Pohl, 67, leaves at a consequential time. It will be up to Col. Parrella to decide whether to overturn one of Col. Pohl’s most significant rulings in the case: his Aug. 17 order to exclude 2006 and 2007 interrogations by the FBI of the alleged conspirators, most conducted soon after their transfer from secret CIA prisons to the U.S. military base in Cuba.

In a filing last week, prosecutors said Col. Pohl had excluded some of the strongest evidence in the case— FBI agents’ descriptions of the men confessing to their roles in the conspiracy.Col. Pohl ruled that prosecution and spy agency prohibitions on defense teams questioning former CIA workersat so-called black sites put defense attorneys atan unfair disadvantage.