USS Cole trial won't be televised

• Tweet

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, Sept. 13 (UPI) -- The chief judge of the Guantanamo war court rejected televising the USS Cole bombing trial in a two-page ruling.

Addressing a pre-trial request by lawyers for defendant Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of masterminding the October 2000 suicide bombing that killed 17 U.S. Navy personnel off the coast of Yemen, that the death penalty trial be available to television networks, Judge Col. James Pohl said only the Secretary of Defense had the authority to permit the broadcasts.

The trial at Guantanamo Bay, the remote American military base on Cuba, is expected to begin in November although motions and discovery issues may delay it, The Miami Herald reported Thursday.

The Pentagon, which controls access to the base, airlifts some 60 members of the media, legal observers and victims of the USS Cole attack, to watch the court proceedings. It is also available to military families and victims, via closed-circuit television, at Fort Meade, Md., and Norfolk, Va., the newspaper said.