Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (عبد الرحيم النشيري;    born January 5, 1965) is a Saudi Arabian citizen alleged to be the mastermind of the bombing of the USS Cole and other terrorist attacks. He is alleged to have headed al-Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf states prior to his capture in November 2002 by the CIA's Special Activities Division.

Al-Nashiri was captured in Dubai in 2002 and held for four years in secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan, Thailand, Poland, Morocco, and Romania, before later being transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. While being interrogated, al-Nashiri has been waterboarded three times. In 2005 the CIA destroyed the tapes of Nashiri's waterboarding. In another incident he was naked and hooded and threatened with a gun and a power drill to scare him into talking. Al-Nashiri was granted victim status in 2010 by the Polish government and a Polish prosecutor began "investigating the possible abuse of power by Polish public officials with regard to a CIA black site" in 2008.

In December 2008, al-Nashiri was charged before a Guantanamo Military Commission. The charges were dropped in February 2009 and reinstated in 2011. Al-Nashiri is currently on trial before a military tribunal in Guantanamo on charges that carry the death penalty. As it is extremely unlikely he would be freed if found not guilty, his lawyers have called the proceeding a show trial.

Background
Born in Saudi Arabia, al-Nashiri travelled to Afghanistan to participate in attacks against the Russians in the region. In 1996, he travelled to Tajikistan and then Jalalabad, Afghanistan, where he first met Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden attempted to convince al-Nashiri to join al-Qaeda at this point, but he refused because he found the idea of swearing a loyalty oath to bin Laden to be distasteful. Still, after al-Nashiri travelled to Yemen, he began to consider committing terrorist actions against United States interests.

When he returned to Afghanistan in 1997, he again met bin Laden, but again declined to join in the terrorist group. Instead, he fought with the Taliban against the Afghan Northern Alliance. Still, he assisted in the smuggling of four anti-tank missiles into Saudi Arabia, and helped arrange for a terrorist to get a Yemeni passport. His cousin, Jihad Mohammad Ali al-Makki, was one of the suicide bombers in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya.

Allegedly joined al-Qaeda
Finally, probably in 1998, al-Nashiri joined al-Qaeda, reporting directly to bin Laden. In late 1998, he conceived of a plot to attack a U.S. vessel using a boat full of explosives. Bin Laden personally approved of the plan, and provided money for it. First, al-Nashiri allegedly attempted to attack the USS The Sullivans as a part of the 2000 millennium attack plots, but the boat he used was overloaded with explosives and began to sink.

The next attempt, however, the USS Cole bombing, was successful. 17 U.S. sailors were killed, and many more were injured. This terrorist attack made him infamous within al-Qaeda, and al-Nashiri allegedly became the chief of operations for the Arabian Peninsula. He organized the Limburg tanker bombing in 2002, and he may have planned other attacks as well.

Arrest
In November 2002, al-Nashiri was captured in the United Arab Emirates. He is currently in American military custody in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, having previously been held at some secret location. On September 29, 2004, he was sentenced to death in absentia in a Yemeni court for his role in the USS Cole bombing.

The U.S. military put al-Rahim al-Nashiri in prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Beforehand, he was held by the CIA at black sites in Thailand and Poland for an undisclosed amount of time. CIA officials disagreed on al-Nashiri's role in planning the Cole bombing. Said one CIA official of al-Nashiri, "He was an idiot. He couldn't read or comprehend a comic book."

Interrogation
Abd al-Rahim attributed his confessions of involvement in the USS Cole bombing to torture. All the details Abd al-Rahim offered of his claims of torture were redacted from his transcript.

Through Freedom of Information Act requests the American Civil Liberties Union was able to acquire less redacted versions of the transcripts from Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri's Combatant Status Review Tribunal, and those of three other captives.

In his opening statement, al-Nashiri listed seven false confessions he had been coerced to make while being waterboarded.
 * 1) The French Merchant Vessel Limburg incident.
 * 2) The USS Cole bombing.
 * 3) The rockets in Saudi Arabia.
 * 4) The plan to bomb American ships in the gulf.
 * 5) Relationship with people committing bombings in Saudi Arabia.
 * 6) Osama Bin Laden having a nuclear bomb.
 * 7) A plan to hijack a plane and crash it into a ship.

During the course of his tribunal he claimed additional confessions he had made, while being tortured. He was ostensibly the last of the al-Qaeda suspects to be videotaped, as he was waterboarded in Thailand by CIA officers who questioned him. Shortly after, when a prisoner died in CIA custody in Iraq, it was decided that all such interrogations would not be videotaped, as it provided criminal "evidence". All the tapes showing detainees being waterboarded were destroyed in 2005.

It was reported on August 22, 2009, that al-Nashiri was the subject of what is described as a mock execution during his torture by the CIA. A power drill and a handgun were used.

In May 2011 al-Nashiri's lawyers filed a case against Poland with the European Court of Human Rights. Al-Nashiri was held and allegedly tortured in a secret CIA "black site" prison "north of Warsaw" (OSAW) from December 2002 to June 2003.

USA v. Al Nashiri
Al Nashiri is currently on trial before a Guantanamo military commission in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. A pre-trial mental health examination is to be conducted upon Al Nashiri.

Order overruled
On January 29, 2009, an order from Obama's new White House administration to suspend all Guantanamo military commission hearings for 120 days was overruled by military judge Army Colonel James Pohl in al-Nashiri's case.

Charges dropped
On February 5, 2009, al-Nashiri's charges were withdrawn without prejudice.

Death penalty
The prosecution planned to request the death penalty for Al Nashiri. The decision lies with the Convening authority, retired Admiral Bruce MacDonald. In April 2011 the Department of Defense allowed Richard Kammen, a civilian lawyer with a background in defending suspects against death penalty cases, to join Al Nashiri's defense team.

Al Nashiri became the first Guantanamo captive to face the death penalty.

Request to end the prosecution
In a letter in July 2011, al-Nashiri's legal team said: ""Through the infliction of physical and psychological abuse, the government has essentially already killed the man it seized almost 10 years ago." and "By torturing Mr. Al-Nashiri and subjecting him to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, the United States has forfeited its right to try him and certainly to kill him,""

Questioning whether Al Nashiri will continue to be detained if he is acquitted
On October 24, 2011 Lieutenant Commander Stephen Reyes filed legal motion requesting that jurors in his case be informed that he can continue to be detained in Guantanamo, even if he was acquitted of all charges. Al Nashiri's formal charges are scheduled to be announced at the Tribunal on November 9, 2011.

Legal scholar Robert M. Chesney, of Lawfare, speculated Al Nashiri would be detained, if acquitted, for at least several more years. Chesney argued that it would be just to continue to detain Al Nashiri, even if he were acquitted, because conviction requires a higher standard of evidence than a habeas corpus petition.

"Eligibility for military detention, according to a now-substantial body of habeas case law, turns on the preponderance of the evidence standard, as applied to a substantive test inquiring whether the person was a member of al Qaeda at the time of capture. One can satisfy that standard consistent with a military commission acquittal."

Defense motions filed in April 2012
Presiding Officer James L. Pohl considered several motions during a pre-trial hearing on April 11, 2012. He deferred rulings on many of them. He did rule to unshackle Nashiri for meetings with his lawyers who had argued that he was traumatized by being shackled for years in secret CIA prisons and that being shackled during meetings impairs his ability to work with his lawyers.

Jose Rodriguez's dispute over al Nashiri's role
On May 8, 2012, Ali Soufan, Al Nashiri's original FBI interrogator asked whether a recently published book by former CIA official Jose Rodriguez would undermine Al Nashiri's prosecution. Soufan's original FBI interrogation used the time-tested, legal technique of rapport-building. He has argued that the information derived from the suspects using legal techniques, prior to the Bush administration decision to allow the CIA to take over the interrogations and to employ torture, was reliable—where the confessions derived through torture weren't.

Rodriguez was in over-all charge of the CIA's torture program. According to Soufan, Rodriquez's account of al Nashiri's role in the Cole bombing differed markedly from that of the prosecution. Rodriguez disputed that Al Nashiri had been the bombing's "mastermind", and agreed with a colleague who characterized him as "the dumbest terrorist I have ever met".

Mental health examination
Presiding Officer James Pohl ruled on February 7, 2013, that an independent panel of mental health experts should examine Al Nashiri, and report back on how the documented torture he was subjected to would affect his ability to assist in his own defense. Pohl called for the director of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to nominate the members of examination team. He called for the team to report back by April 1, 2013. The team is supposed to be given full access to al Nashiri's medical files, including the top secret records from his times in CIA custody. The assessment was requested by the prosecution. Al Nashiri's defense team objected to the assessment, based on their doubts that a team appointed by the Office of Military Commissions could be relied upon. They called for the team to rely on the advice of Dr Vincent Iacopino for how to interview Al Nashiri, without causing additional damage. Iacopino, a renowned expert on torture, had testified before the Military Commission on February 5, 2013 about the possible effects of torture on Al Nashiri.

Military Commission
On February 18, 2014, al Nashiri attempted to fire his counsel, Rick Kammen. Judge Pohl granted a recess until 2/19/14 to allow Kammen to attempt to repair the relationship with his client. If the two are unable to overcome their differences, al Nashiri will be permitted to fire Kammen under current military commission rules.

European Court of Human Rights decision
On 24 July 2014 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Poland violated the European Convention on Human Rights when it cooperated with US allowing the CIA to hold and torture al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah on its territory in 2002–2003. The court ordered the Polish government to pay each of the men 100,000 euros in damages.