Cole Ship

The Pentagon announced Monday it would seek the death penalty against a Saudi Arabian accused of plotting the October 2000 terrorist attack on the destroyer Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors.

A federal judge ruled in Norfolk that the Sudanese government caused the terrorist bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole and would be liable for damages to the families of the 17 sailors killed in the attack. U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar said he would issue a written opinion later to explain his reasoning. He requested additional paperwork, including tax returns of the sailors killed, to help calculate damages.

A veteran Al Qaeda operative has confessed to being the mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole, as well as a key conduit between Osama bin Laden and a terrorist cell in East Africa, according to a transcript of a military tribunal hearing released Monday by the Pentagon. Walid bin Attash has long been suspected of playing a key role in the bombing of the Cole as it refueled in Yemen. The attack killed 17 U.S. sailors and nearly sank the $1-billion guided-missile destroyer.

Yemen has set free one of the Al Qaeda masterminds of the bombing that killed 17 American sailors aboard the destroyer Cole in 2000, a senior security official said Thursday. Jamal Mohammed Ahmad Ali Badawi, who is wanted by the FBI, was convicted in 2004 of plotting, preparing and helping carry out the Cole bombing in the Yemeni port of Aden. He received a death sentence that was commuted to 15 years in prison. He and 22 others, mostly Al Qaeda fighters, escaped from prison last year.

The officer who commanded the destroyer Cole when it was attacked in Yemen in 2000 will not be promoted because he did not meet the standards expected of commanding officers, the Navy said. Almost six years after the Al Qaeda attack killed 17 sailors while the warship was refueling, Navy Secretary Donald C. Winter pulled Cmdr. Kirk S. Lippold off a promotion list, saying he was not qualified to rise to the rank of captain.

Nine suspects in the 2000 bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole have been arrested, the government of Yemen said Tuesday, including eight who had escaped from prison. Interior Minister Rashad Eleimi said authorities were closing in on two more suspects still at large after their jailbreak last April in the southern port city of Aden. The bombing in Aden killed 17 U.S. sailors and has been blamed on the Al Qaeda terror network.

Yemeni security forces have recaptured the last two of 10 militants who escaped from prison last year after being detained in connection with the 2000 bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole, an official said. Jamal Mohammed Ahmad Ali Badawi, Yemen's most-wanted man, and Fahd Mohammed Ahmed Quso were arrested in the mountains of the southern province of Abyan, Gov. Farid Mujawar said. Officials said both men were wounded in a shootout.

Yemen's former interior minister helped the alleged mastermind of the attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole to pass through security checkpoints in the months leading up to the 2000 bombing, according to a document read aloud in court Wednesday by a defense lawyer for five of the suspects.

A trial in the October 2000 bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole concluded in Sana, Yemen, with prosecutors asking for the death penalty for the six defendants. The defendants, including a Saudi in U.S. custody who is being tried in absentia, are the first to be tried in the attack carried out by two suicide bombers in a boat. The blast killed 17 sailors. A verdict is expected Sept. 29. The men could get as little as 15 years.

A Yemeni court Wednesday sentenced two Islamic militants to death by firing squad for helping suicide bombers who slammed an explosives-rigged motorboat into the side of the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole in October 2000. A judge handed down prison terms to four others, all Yemenis, for forging documents, delivering money and planning to videotape the attack, which ripped a gaping hole in the side of the ship, killing 17 U.S. sailors.