The USS Cole bombing was a suicide attack by al-Qaeda against USS Cole, a guided missile destroyer of the United States Navy, on 12 October 2000, while she was being refueled in Yemen's Aden harbor.
Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi is a Sudanese militant and paymaster for al-Qaeda. Qosi was held from January 2002 in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number is 54.
Walid Muhammad Salih bin Mubarak bin Attash is a Yemeni prisoner held at the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camp under terrorism-related charges and is suspected of playing a key role in the early stages of the 9/11 attacks. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has described him as a "scion of a terrorist family". American prosecutors at the Guantanamo military commissions allege that he helped in the preparation of the 1998 East Africa Embassy bombings and the USS Cole bombing and acted as a bodyguard to Osama bin Laden, gaining himself the reputation of an "errand boy". He is formally charged with selecting and helping to train several of the hijackers of the September 11 attacks.
Charles A. Graner Jr. is an American former soldier who was court-martialed for prisoner abuse after the 2003–2004 Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. Along with other soldiers of his Army Reserve unit, the 372nd Military Police Company, Graner was accused of allowing and inflicting sexual, physical, and psychological abuse on Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib prison, a notorious prison in Baghdad during the United States' occupation of Iraq.
Abd al-Rahim Hussein Muhammed Abdu al-Nashiri is a Saudi Arabian citizen alleged to be the mastermind of the bombing of USS Cole and other maritime attacks. He is alleged to have headed al-Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf states prior to his capture in November 2002 by the CIA's Special Activities Division.
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison within the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Gitmo, on the coast of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. As of April 2023, of the 779 people detained there since January 2002 when the military prison first opened after the September 11 attacks, 740 had been transferred elsewhere, 30 remained there, and nine had died while in custody.
Noor Uthman Muhammed is a citizen of Sudan who was confined in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba where he also served a sentence for terrorism after being convicted by the Guantanamo military commission.
Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza al-Darbi is a citizen of Saudi Arabia who was held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba from August 2002 to May 2018; in May 2018, he was transferred to Saudi Arabia's custody. He was the only detainee held at Guantanamo released during President Donald Trump's administration.
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 mandated that rulings from the Guantanamo military commissions could be appealed to a Court of Military Commission Review, which would sit in Washington D.C.
United States v. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, et al. is the trial of five alleged al-Qaeda members for aiding the September 11, 2001 attacks. Charges were announced by Brigadier General Thomas W. Hartmann on February 11, 2008 at a press conference hosted by the Pentagon. The men charged are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ammar al-Baluchi, and Mustafa Ahmad al Hawsawi.
Patrick Parrish is an officer in the United States Army.
Nancy J. Paul is an officer in the United States Air Force.
Ali H. Soufan is a Lebanese-American former FBI agent who was involved in a number of high-profile anti-terrorism cases both in the United States and around the world. A 2006 New Yorker article described Soufan as coming closer than anyone to preventing the September 11 attacks and implied that he would have succeeded had the CIA been willing to share information with him. He resigned from the FBI in 2005 after publicly chastising the CIA for not sharing intelligence with him which could have prevented the attacks.
Carol Rosenberg is a senior journalist at The New York Times. Long a military-affairs reporter at the Miami Herald, from January 2002 into 2019 she reported on the operation of the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camps, at its naval base in Cuba. Her coverage of detention of captives at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp has been praised by her colleagues and legal scholars, and in 2010 she spoke about it by invitation at the National Press Club. Rosenberg had previously covered events in the Middle East. In 2011, she received the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for her nearly decade of work on the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
Dirk Padgett is an American lawyer and officer in the United States Navy Reserve's Judge Advocate corp. Padgett is notable for his appointment to serve as a prosecutor for a Guantanamo military commission.
The Military Commissions Act of 2009, which amended the Military Commissions Act of 2006, was passed to address concerns by the United States Supreme Court. In Boumediene v. Bush (2008) the court had ruled that section 7 of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was unconstitutional in suspending the right of detainees to habeas corpus. The court ruled that detainees had the right to access US federal courts to challenge their detentions.
A number of incidents stemming from the September 11 attacks have raised questions about legality.
Vincent Iacopino is an American doctor, who has specialized in the after-effects of torture. He is the author or co-author of several books on torture, or that address topics related to torture. He came up with the idea of the Istanbul Protocol.
Rear Admiral David B. Woods is an officer in the United States Navy. When Woods was a junior officer he served as a fighter pilot. When he became more senior he specialized in signals intelligence.
Stephen D. Gill is an American lawyer, from Massachusetts, and a retired United States Naval Reserve officer.
