USS Cole Confession: Waleed bin Attash

A Yemeni man accused of being an al-Qaida operative confessed to plotting the bombings of the USS Cole and two African U.S. embassies, the confession came as part of the private military hearings that are being held for 14 "high-value" terror suspects that have been kept in secret CIA prisons before they were sent to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (GTMO) last fall.^[1]

Waleed bin Attash asserted that he helped plan the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200, and that he helped organize the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in which suicide bombers steered an explosives-laden boat into the guided-missile destroyer, killing 17 sailors.^[2] "I participated in the buying or purchasing of the explosives……[and] I put together the plan for the operation a year and a half prior to the operation, buying the boat and recruiting the members that did the operation." bin Attash said when asked what his role was in the attacks.^[3]

Bin Attash told a March 12 hearing that he met the embassy bombers just a few hours before the bombings took place, also saying "I was the link between Osama bin Laden and his deputy[Abu Ayyub al-Masri].”^[4] He also allegedly helped select the Sept. 11 hijackers and made two scout flights on U.S. airlines to assess in-flight security, additionally it is asserted that Bin Laden wanted bin Attash to be one of the hijackers on Sept. 11, but that plan was thwarted when bin Attash was arrested in Yemen in April of that year and briefly imprisoned after attempting to get a U.S. visa.^[5]

However legal experts have criticized the U.S. decision to bar independent observers from the hearings, called “combatant status review tribunals.”^[6] This creates legitimate concerns about the nature of these confessions, because there are no witnesses to watch the proceeding, all that the public sees are the transcripts.^[7] “The claim has been that some of the confessions were extracted by torture or other activities that are inappropriate, and (there are) doubts about whether the detainees are telling the truth," said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor.^[8]

These hearings are being held to determine whether the suspects should be declared "enemy combatants”, a legal status that allows the prisoners to be held indefinitely until their prosecution by military tribunals, if declared an enemy combatant, the detainees can be charged and tried under the military commissions law signed by President Bush in October.^[9]

The U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay opened five years ago, mostly with men captured from the war in Afghanistan. Around 385 prisoners are still being held there and about 80 detainees are designated for release or transfer.^[10]

For more on this see our previous posting, here.

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^[1] Pauline Jelinek, Mastermind of USS Cole Attack Confesses, AP (via ABC News), March 20, 2007.
^[2] Id.
^[3] Id.
^[4] Al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, took over the leadership of al-Qaida in Iraq after its leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a U.S. airstrike last June. Id.
^[5] Id.
^[6] Id
^[7] Id.
^[8] There have been numerous credibility questions regarding the confession of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who claimed responsibility or partial responsibility for nearly three dozen plots including the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., according to transcripts of his March 10 hearing released last week. Id.
^[9] Id.
^[10] Id.