A military judge on Monday called the top Pentagon official overseeing the war court to testify on why the Defense Department suddenly ordered judges to move down to this remote base until they’ve wrapped up complex death-penalty cases that are months if not years away from trial.
Air Force Col. Vance Spath, the judge, agreed to the testimony sought by lawyers for the alleged USS Cole bomber who argue the order to judges to move to Guantánamo seeks to illegally meddle in the war crimes trials. He told Pentagon prosecutors that the architect of the relocation order, retired Marine Maj. Gen. Vaughn Ary, should either get on a plane to Guantánamo or be available to testify by teleconference on Tuesday afternoon.
Ary, just months on the job as top overseer of the war court, sought and got the rule change to relocate military judges to Guantánamo for the three ongoing trials, including the Sept. 11 conspiracy case, with an internal memo that complained about the slow pace of prosecutions.
Defense lawyers charge that amounts to illegal meddling, a sin in military justice called “unlawful command influence,” designed to unfairly rush the death-penalty trial of Saudi captive Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, 50, as the alleged mastermind the USS Cole bombing. They want the judge to dismiss the case.