12 September 2018 :

Army Col. James L. Pohl on Monday announced he will retire on Sept. 30 and assigned a Marine colonel who has been a military judge for three years to replace him, effective immediately. In his notice filed at the Office of Military Commissions, Pohl said he has chosen to “leave active duty after 38 years. To be clear, this was my decision and not impacted by any outside influence from any source.” Pohl assigned Marine Col. Keith A. Parrella, 44, White, a military judge who currently handles court-martial cases at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to replace him. Accused mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other alleged accomplices are accused of conspiring with the hijackers who killed 2,976 people on Sept. 11, 2001, and could face military execution if they are convicted. But it’s been six years since the suspects were arraigned. The Guantánamo case still has no trial date as Pohl and now Parrella sift through pretrial motions at the court President George W. Bush created after the 9/11 attacks. To catch up, Parrella will need to read six years of motions, more than 20,000 pages of pretrial transcripts and a classified record whose size is not known.