Trump’s terror claim about Iran could help an accused Osama bin Laden henchman walk free again
President Donald Trump’s invocation of the 25-year-old bombing of an American warship as part of his justification for launching a massive bombing campaign against Iran could hamper long-running Pentagon efforts to finally bring the alleged terrorists accused of perpetrating the terror attack to justice.
On two occasions over the nearly two weeks since the Defense Department launched Operation Epic Fury against targets across Iran, Trump has claimed Tehran was responsible for the October 2000 bombing of U.S.S. Cole, a grisly attack that killed 17 U.S. Navy sailors and left 37 others injured.
When he announced the start of the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign in the early hours of Feb. 28, Trump claimed Tehran “knew and [was] probably involved” with the Cole attack, and he repeated the allegations during a press conference on Monday when he insisted that Iran had been “involved very strongly” in the attack.
Yet according to the very government he leads — including a blue-ribbon commission’s report on the attacks and filings by military prosecutors seeking to convict the alleged perpetrators — Iran wasn’t involved at all.
And that’s a key detail, because as Trump recklessly tosses out allegations about the Cole, he is also assisting in the defense of the very al-Qaeda terrorist who is awaiting trial for allegedly planning it.
According to the final report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States — better known as the 9/11 Commission — the attacks were planned and carried out by Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi national of Yemeni descent who joined up with al-Qaeda some time between 1996 and 1998 in Afghanistan, allegedly reporting only to the group’s leader, Osama bin Laden.
The commission’s report states that al-Hashiri proposed attacking American warships in “late 1998,” with bin Laden, a Saudi construction scion who was the group’s main financier, giving his approval and providing funds for the operation. After bin Laden allegedly suggested that al-Nashiri look for targets in the Port of Aden on Yemen’s southern coast, al-Nashiri unsuccessfully targeted the American destroyer U.S.S. The Sullivans 10 months before the successful attack on Cole.
He was captured by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Special Activities Division in 2002 as part of the U.S. effort to round up high-level al-Qaeda operatives, and he was moved to the U.S. military brig at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay four years later.
The 61-year-old accused al-Qaeda operative is still at Guantanamo, where the U.S. has housed many of the alleged terrorists captured during the early years of the Global War on Terror. He is set to face trial in June before a military commission, which in 2011 formally accused him of three criminal law-of-war violations, conspiracy and terrorism charges stemming from the Cole attack.
So when the President of the United States twice declared that Iran — not al-Qaeda or any of its members — had masterminded the Cole bombing, al-Nashiri’s legal team took notice.
Allison Miller, the lead attorney responsible for defending the accused terrorist operative, told The Independent in an email that Trump’s comments “impact our defense.”
“We’ve requested additional information from the government regarding the intelligence information that supports President Trump’s now repeated claims that Iran is responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole,” she added.
Because Trump’s claim is at odds with the specific accusations the government has made against al-Nashiri in charging documents, the new accusations against Iran could, in theory, serve as a defense for the accused al-Qaeda operative.
It’s not clear why Trump decided to include the Cole attack among the litany of grievances he’s routinely recited against Tehran’s government as he’s sought to justify a war that has upended financial markets and sent oil prices soaring as Iran has moved to choke off the west’s oil supply by closing the Strait of Hormuz to most commercial traffic.
