Judge halts trial for bombing USS Cole ‘until a superior court tells me to keep going’

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba—The judge in the trial of the man accused of planning the bombing of the USS Cole on Friday shut down the proceedings over his inability to get defense lawyers back to the death-penalty case.

Air Force Col. Vance Spath has for months now disagreed with the Chief Defense Counsel for Military Commissions, Marine Brig. Gen. John Baker, over the general’s decision and authority that released three lawyers of record from the case in October when they asked to resign over an ethical issue. On Nov. 1, after Baker refused to return veteran death-penalty defender Rick Kammen and civilian attorneys Rosa Eliades and Mary Spears to the case—the judge sentenced the general to 21 days of confinement in his quarters for disobeying an order.

Friday morning, on the last day of a weeklong hearing in which Eliades and Spears ignored prosecution subpoenas to appear at court by video feed, Spath assembled defense and prosecution attorneys in the court and offered a 30-minute monologue.

He listed his frustrations at having his orders ignored, uncertainty over his authority raised by the Marine general’s decision-making and inaction by Pentagon officials to help him. At one point he said he was considering retiring from the Air Force, then declared that he needed clear answers on how to proceed.

“I am abating these proceedings indefinitely,” he said twice, at one point adding: “We’re done until a superior court tells me to keep going.”

He then walked off the bench at 10:12 a.m., declaring: “We are in abatement. We are out. Thank you. We’re in recess.”

The man accused of orchestrating the Oct. 12, 2000, bombing of the Navy warship off Yemen that killed 17 American sailors was not in court. Spath ruled, before abating, that Abd al Rahim al Nashiri had voluntarily waived his attendance, even though the prisoner had asked a prison lawyer about the proposed mode of transportation to the war court compound, Camp Justice, that day.

Baker, the chief defense counsel, says that the war court rules invest in his job the authority to release attorneys of record from ongoing cases “for good cause.” That’s what he did in October, based on his knowledge of classified information and an independent legal ethics expert’s opinion.