14 January 2019 :

Chaos Continues in Guantánamo Death-Penalty Trial, As Another Military Judge Quits. The already chaotic Guantánamo death-penalty trial of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, accused of orchestrating the October 2000 attack on the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole, hit another snag as the most recent judge assigned to preside over the controversial proceedings will be leaving the military and quitting the case. In a January 4, 2019 appellate pleading recently obtained by the McClatchy News Service, prosecutors advised the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that Air Force Colonel Shelley Schools, assigned in August 2018 as the third judge to preside over the USS Cole military tribunal, one month later accepted an offer to become an immigration court judge and “intends to retire from the military in the near future.” Schools’s retirement leaves the Guantánamo tribunal yet again without a judge to handle pretrial proceedings. Schools was assigned the case after former judge and Air Force Colonel Vance Spath also retired from the military to become a civilian immigration judge. It is unlikely that Schools will preside over any developments in the USS Cole case before she joins the immigration court in the summer of 2019. The case is currently on appeal in federal court, where Nashiri’s lawyers are seeking to vacate the rulings made by Spath during a three-year period in which he secretly pursued appointment of the civilian immigration judge job at the Department of Justice (DOJ), while presiding over Nashiri’s military tribunal case, which was being handled by DOJ prosecutors.