Pentagon launches war court website

Defense sources said retired Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald was still deciding how to go forward in the case of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, 46, a former Saudi millionaire accused of masterminding Al Qaida’s suicide bombing of a Navy destroyer off the coast of Yemen two decades ago.

Nashiri’s trial is bound to put a spotlight on both the CIA’s treatment of its captives and also on Navy security in October 2000 off Aden, Yemen, where the warship was on a refueling stop when two suicide bombers drove a bomb-laden skiff into the USS Cole. Seventeen American sailors were killed.

The $1.1 billion warship was crippled but subsequently rebuilt and calls Norfolk, Va., home when it’s not at sea.

Wednesday, the new website showed that prosecutors were still seeking a capitol murder trial in the case, in the latest version of their charge sheet from Sept. 15. But it did not include a July 15 filing by Nashiri’s defenders that argued that the case was too tainted by torture, delay and an untested process to go forward.