MIAMI (AP) – A U.S. military judge on Friday put pretrial hearings in the Sept. 11 terrorism case at Guantanamo Bay on an indefinite hold amid a dispute with officials over the way he travels to the remote courtroom.
Army Col. James Pohl says that as a judge he must be kept separate from participants in proceedings against the accused Sept. 11 plotters. For years, that included taking a Coast Guard speedboat across Guantanamo Bay from the airport to the court on the U.S. base in Cuba. Others involved in the case take a ferry.
The commander of the detention center, Navy Rear Adm. Edward Cashman, abruptly changed base policy on June 23 so that the judge would no longer have access to the boat. A week later, Pohl ruled the new policy would cause him and his staff to be improperly “commingled” with other participants in the trial by military commission. He issued an order that put further hearings on hold until the issue is resolved.
Prosecutors asked him to reconsider and suggested he could ride in a private van on the ferry. Pohl rejected that argument in the order Friday. “In abating the proceedings, the Commission exercised its inherent authority to take steps it deemed necessary to ensure a fair trial,” he wrote in a brief ruling before canceling a five-day pretrial scheduled to start July 17.
Another judge, Air Force Col. Vance Spath, issued a similar order Friday putting a hold on the case of a prisoner charged in the 2000 attack on the USS Cole because of the new transportation policy, said Rick Kammen, the lead defense counsel.