FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) – A lawyer for the Guantanamo Bay detainee accused of orchestrating the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen on Monday questioned the attitudes of the new judge in the case.
Attorney Richard Kammen spent more than 90 minutes quizzing Air Force Col. Vance Spath about his views on matters including the death penalty, torture and Islam.
Spath was assigned in July to preside over the U.S. Military Commissions trial of Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri. Spath succeeded Army Col. James Pohl, who stepped down to avoid scheduling conflicts with another high-profile case he is hearing, the Sept. 11 conspiracy trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four alleged accomplices.
Monday’s pretrial hearing in Cuba was the first before Spath. The Associated Press covered the hearing by watching a video feed at Fort Meade, near Baltimore.
Kammen probed Spath’s views on the death penalty, since al-Nashiri could face the death penalty if convicted. Spath was the lead prosecutor against Senior Airman Andrew P. Witt, who was sentenced to death in 2005 for premeditated murder in the 2004 stabbing deaths of Senior Airman Andrew Schliepsiek and his wife Jamie in Macon, Georgia.