An Army judge ruled on Friday that the defendant in the USS Cole Bombing case is mentally competent to stand trial, clearing the way for jury selection to start Nov. 2 in the first capital case by the military commission at Guantanamo Bay.
Col. Matthew Fitzgerald, the judge, made the finding in a two-page interim ruling on Friday afternoon. “Detailed findings of fact will be provided when a final ruling is issued,” Judge Fitzgerald wrote, promising a written ruling “as soon as practicable.”
Fitzgerald heard evidence and arguments Oct.19-26 after defense lawyers for the defendant, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, notified the judge that two Pentagon-funded civilian experts found him unfit for trial. They blamed al-Nashiri’s incapacity on his torture by the CIA during his 2002-2006 detention in agency black sites, and said his mental illnesses were compounded by the prisoner’s conditions at Guantanamo’s wartime prison and the flashback-inducing van rides he takes to the court complex, called Camp Justice.
The judge ordered an Army psychiatrist, serving as a one-doctor Sanity Board, to interview the prisoner. Maj. Anthony Ralston, the doctor, agreed with earlier military medical diagnoses that al-Nashiri had depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. But Ralston found him cogent enough to understand the court proceedings and assist his lawyers.
“The commission finds the defense failed to overcome the presumption of competence,” Judge Fitzgerald wrote. “Accordingly, the commission finds the accused is able to understand the nature of the proceedings against him and to conduct or cooperate intelligently in his defense and is therefore competent to stand trial.”
Fitzgerald issued the ruling as 36 members of the U.S. military were on their way to the remote U.S. naval installation in southeast Cuba. They are the vanguard of about 200 service members who could be brought to Guantanamo in groups of 18 in coming weeks until a panel of 12 jurors and six alternates is chosen. Some pool members were coming from military outposts in Europe and Asia.
Al-Nashiri, 61, has been in U.S. custody since 2002. He is accused of a key role in the Oct. 12, 2000 bombing of the U.S. Navy warship in Aden Harbor in Yemen. Suicide bombers in an explosives-laden ship came alongside the destroyer while it was on a refueling stop and detonated their boat.
Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed and dozens of other members of the destroyer’s 300-member crew were injured. The ship was crippled and had to be loaded on a Norwegian ship and brought back to the United States for repairs.
Fitzgerald, the Army colonel judge, is presiding in the case. The prosecutors are led by Cmdr. Clayton Trivett, a civilian prosecutor on the Sept. 11 conspiracy case as well, who was recently mobilized to the Navy Reserve for the role. Al-Nashiri’s six-lawyer defense team is led by Allison Miller, a capital defense lawyer from Florida who took over the case in 2024. She has three military defense lawyers, two of them Navy officers, and two civilians on her team.
Jury selection could take weeks. Miller plans to question proposed panel members extensively about their attitudes toward the death penalty, Islam, and knowledge of any potential political influences on the case.
