US military prosecutors have requested death penalty for the alleged mastermind behind the bombing of the USS Cole warship that killed 17 US sailors in 2000, the Pentagon said on Monday. Abdel Rahim Al-Nashiri, being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, faces eight charges, including murder and terrorism, for the attack in the Yemeni port of Aden on Oct. 12, 2000, that also wounded 47 sailors and disabled the ship. Prosecutors have also charged Al-Nashiri over a failed attack on another US warship, the USS The Sullivans, in Aden in January 2000 and an attack on the SS Limburg, a French supertanker, in the Gulf of Aden in October 2002. “Five of the eight charges carry the maximum penalty of death,” said Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, legal adviser to the body that oversees the military commissions system set up to try terrorism suspects. Prosecutors allege Al-Nashiri was a senior Al-Qaeda figure. He is one of 14 “high value” detainees held at the prison at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay. The bombings of the USS Cole and US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998 were the most serious Al-Qaeda attacks before Sept. 11, 2001. Officials said that Monday's indictments bring to 20 the number of Guantanamo detainees now facing controversial military tribunals set up by President George W. Bush to try “war on terror” suspects. Arrested in Oct. 2002, Al-Nashiri spent several years in secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons. The CIA acknowledged in February that he was among suspects subjected to “waterboarding,” a simulated drowning technique widely considered torture.
