
A military judge has refused the Obama administration's request to delay proceeding for 120 days in the case of a detainee held at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who is accused of planning the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole warship, an al-Qaeda strike that killed 17 service members and injured 50 others.
The decision throws into some disarray the administration's plan to buy some time as it reviews individual detainee cases as part of its plan to close the prison. The Pentagon may now be forced to withdraw the charges against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi citizen of Yemeni descent. In one of its first actions, the Obama administration instructed military prosecutors to seek 120-day suspensions of legal proceedings in the cases of 21 detainees who have been charged.
The request was quickly granted in other cases when prosecutors told military judges that "the newly inaugurated president and his administration [can] review the military commissions process, generally, and the cases currently pending before military commissions, specifically."
But Judge James Pohl, an Army colonel, said he found the government's reasoning "unpersuasive."
Nashiri is facing arraignment on Feb. 9, and Pohl said the proceeding would go ahead.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/29/AR2009012902021.html?hpid=topnews