(NY Times) A military judge on Monday postponed the trial in Al Qaeda’s 2000 bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole until next year to give defense lawyers more time to prepare for the death penalty case.
The judge, Col. Matthew S. Fitzgerald, announced the new start date for the trial — June 1, 2026 — at a pretrial hearing at the naval station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The judge had scheduled the trial to begin on Oct. 6, days before the 25th anniversary of the attack that killed 17 U.S. sailors and wounded dozens of others. The defendant, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, is accused of helping to orchestrate the attack by two suicide bombers who blew up a bomb-laden skiff alongside the Cole during a refueling stop off Aden, Yemen.
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