Washington
Lawyer questions al-Qaida suspect’s competence before USS Cole bombing trial
WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer for the suspected organizer of a deadly al-Qaida attack on a U.S. warship in the year 2000 wants a military court to determine his competence before trial, arguing that he has a traumatic brain injury “arising from torture in CIA custody.”
A trial is scheduled to start this month for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in the killing of 17 U.S. sailors, who died when an explosives-laden skiff blew up alongside the USS Cole destroyer off the coast of Yemen.
He faces a possible death penalty. The proceedings at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba, where he is detained, are expected to last at least six months.
Captured in 2002, Nashiri underwent waterboarding, beatings, and confinement in a crate for years in CIA custody at clandestine detention facilities. Declassified documents released in 2018 graphically described how he was stripped naked, repeatedly slammed against walls and left “moaning, shaking and asking God to help him repeatedly.”
Nashiri’s attorney, Allison Ferber Miller, asked a federal court in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to delay the proceedings until the military commission has had enough time to determine his mental capacity.
A psychiatrist for the defense who examined Nashiri in August concluded that he is “not competent,” Miller wrote.
“He diagnosed a traumatic brain injury (TBI) arising from torture in CIA custody, a severe neurocognitive disorder, complex post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and major depression,” Miller wrote. “He concluded that Petitioner cannot understand the proceedings or assist his counsel.”
Miller wrote that Nashiri is not asking the federal judge to determine his competence but to delay the trial until the military commission has had “a meaningful opportunity” to do so.
The military judge had ordered a competency evaluation, “but left no time for a meaningful hearing” on whether al-Nashiri is fit for trial, Miller wrote, adding that the military judge has declined three times to stay the proceedings until the question of Nashiri’s competence was resolved.
Lawyers in the case were scheduled to travel to Guantanamo Bay on Saturday, Miller wrote. The military judge left open the possibility for a competency hearing on Monday morning, the same day the trial was scheduled to begin.
The trial has since been rescheduled to start a week later on Oct. 26, according to Ronald Flesvig, the spokesman for the Office of Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay.
The Office of the Chief Prosecutor for military commissions at Guantanamo Bay did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
Proceedings before the military commission were previously mired in delays and in legal challenges over admissibility of evidence from the torture-aided interrogations of Nashiri and over other circumstances of his trial and detention. Questions over the handling of Nashiri’s case, like those of other Guantanamo Bay detainees accused of planning and aiding al-Qaida’s 9/11 attacks on the United States, have led to constitutional debates and other problems.
Minnesota
Trump administration stopped sharing evidence in Good and Pretti killings, state officials say
The federal government has stopped sharing evidence with Minnesota authorities who are investigating the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers, state officials said in recent court filings.
Minnesota officials sued President Donald Trump’s administration in March for access to materials they said they needed to independently investigate the shootings during Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis earlier this year. The Trump administration has suggested that state prosecutors don’t have jurisdiction to investigate federal officers, while Minnesota officials have said they don’t trust the federal government to investigate itself.
The state is still seeking the cell phones of the officers involved in both shootings and recordings of key interviews.
State prosecutors announced in July that the federal government had begun turning over evidence in the cases, including police body camera video and hard drives containing statements. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said at the time that the state expected to receive “all the evidence.”
But Minnesota investigators said in October court filings that the transfer of evidence stopped soon after the July announcement. Moriarty said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota told her on Sept. 10 that evidence sharing would be on pause indefinitely “in light of challenges with D.C.,” according to the documents.
State prosecutors have again asked a judge to order federal agencies to hand over the evidence, arguing they “have identified no legal authority or rational basis justifying their obstruction of state criminal investigations.”
In a reply filed Tuesday, attorneys for the Justice Department argued it’s within their discretion to decline to share information with state authorities. They cited the department’s rules for responding to record requests, known as the Touhy regulations, which apply only when formal legal proceedings are underway. The attorneys said there was no active court case when Minnesota made its requests.
Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said in a legal declaration that federal authorities still have Good’s clothing, the cell phone of the officer who killed her and interview recordings that state authorities have never been able to view.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, while she was leaving a Minneapolis protest on Jan. 7. Bystander video shows Good in the driver’s seat of an SUV, repeatedly honking the horn, when masked immigration officers order her to step out of the vehicle. She starts to pull forward, and an officer standing in front of the car fires at her windshield. The officer, now standing about an arm’s length from the open window on the driver’s side, fires twice more, according to an analysis of the videos by The Associated Press and others.
Federal officials at the time said the officer acted in self-defense.
Good’s death and that of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse who was killed weeks later by a federal officer in Minneapolis, ignited nationwide protests against the Republican president’s immigration enforcement efforts.
No criminal charges have been filed in connection with the fatal shootings.
Evans said the federal government also has not shared a recorded statement from an officer who shot Pretti, the firearms used by the officers, their phones, projectiles and casings, and a gun taken from Pretti before he was shot.
Ohio
Courts block Republicans from killing a clean air law opposed by polluters
A Franklin County judge blocked last week a state law that eliminated Ohioans’ special legal powers to sue polluting neighbors like steel or other industrial plants that spit smoke, ash or other fumes into the sky.
This marks the second time in a short few years that environmental interests have managed to squash, at least temporarily, an effort to kill the air nuisance rule, which has been on the books in Ohio for more than 50 years.
The ruling last week from Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Julie Lynch states that lawmakers’ directive to state officials to repeal the air nuisance rule, which was slipped into the state budget as an 11th hour amendment, violated a provision of the state constitution that says legislation can span only a single subject.
“The Air Pollution Amendment has nothing to do with appropriations or state operations. Therefore, it violates the Constitution’s one-subject rule,” she said.
The air nuisance rule is fairly simple. It says that the emission or escape of smoke, ash, dust, grime, acid, fumes, gas, vapors or others that endanger health, safety or welfare of the public or property is an unlawful nuisance. Since 1974 the rule has been a part of Ohio’s comprehensive plan to comply with the federal Clean Air Act, the bedrock law protecting ambient air in the U.S.
Among the plaintiffs is a Cincinnati-area woman named Donna Ballinger, who has used the air nuisance rule to go after a neighboring, 2,800-acre steel plant now owned by Cleveland Cliffs in the Butler and Warren county area. Both the state and private citizens have used the law in the past as well, including one resident who won a $1.3 million settlement from a Dayton-area nuclear waste disposal company.
Removing the rule blocks plaintiffs from suing in federal court, and some of them argued that the new rules narrow, if not close, the door on state lawsuits as well.
Lynch’s ruling also killed off a related provision that prohibited the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency from considering data from community air monitoring devices to support the issuance of a fine or penalty. Those devices are privately owned sensors that some people deploy when they feel officials don’t believe their complaints.
A spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General’s office said they are reviewing the ruling and determining next steps. He didn’t answer whether the state plans to appeal the decision.
Environmental organizations like the Ohio Environmental Council and Case Western Reserve University’s Environmental Law Clinic that participated in the lawsuit hailed the ruling as a victory.
“The repeal of the Air Nuisance Rule has never been popular nor justified, and the State of Ohio’s own records show it’s a critical tool the public and state agencies use to hold big polluters accountable,” said Neil Waggoner, the midwest Beyond Coal campaign manager for the Sierra Club.
“The Court’s ruling is clear, and the State of Ohio should move expeditiously to end the current repeal effort and should not take any further action to undermine the rule again.”
In 2019, SunCoke, which makes coke used in the steelmaking process and has been repeatedly accused of air emissions violations in Ohio, hired a law firm that lobbied the U.S. EPA to remove the air nuisance rule from Ohio’s Clean Air Act plan.
Most such changes in administrative law require a fairly robust and transparent process. But as the company argued, and the EPA under President Donald Trump agreed, the decision to create the law in the first place was referred to as a technical “error,” which freed it up for a swift change.
Ballinger and a suite of different environmental advocacy organizations sued to stop the EPA. A mix of drawn out legal pressure and the change in presidential administration eventually led to the rule’s reinstatement in February 2025.
Around that time, lawmakers stepped in on the issue – drawing support from SunCoke, Cleveland Cliffs and the Chamber of Commerce – as they crafted the state budget.
Senators effectively neutered the rule by requiring the Ohio EPA to remove it from Ohio’s Clean Air Act plan. They did so via a late-breaking amendment passed just before the legislation passed. Senate Finance Chairman Jerry Cirino, a Kirtland Republican, has declined to say which senator proposed it.
Lawyer questions al-Qaida suspect’s competence before USS Cole bombing trial
WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer for the suspected organizer of a deadly al-Qaida attack on a U.S. warship in the year 2000 wants a military court to determine his competence before trial, arguing that he has a traumatic brain injury “arising from torture in CIA custody.”
A trial is scheduled to start this month for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in the killing of 17 U.S. sailors, who died when an explosives-laden skiff blew up alongside the USS Cole destroyer off the coast of Yemen.
He faces a possible death penalty. The proceedings at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba, where he is detained, are expected to last at least six months.
Captured in 2002, Nashiri underwent waterboarding, beatings, and confinement in a crate for years in CIA custody at clandestine detention facilities. Declassified documents released in 2018 graphically described how he was stripped naked, repeatedly slammed against walls and left “moaning, shaking and asking God to help him repeatedly.”
Nashiri’s attorney, Allison Ferber Miller, asked a federal court in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to delay the proceedings until the military commission has had enough time to determine his mental capacity.
A psychiatrist for the defense who examined Nashiri in August concluded that he is “not competent,” Miller wrote.
“He diagnosed a traumatic brain injury (TBI) arising from torture in CIA custody, a severe neurocognitive disorder, complex post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and major depression,” Miller wrote. “He concluded that Petitioner cannot understand the proceedings or assist his counsel.”
Miller wrote that Nashiri is not asking the federal judge to determine his competence but to delay the trial until the military commission has had “a meaningful opportunity” to do so.
The military judge had ordered a competency evaluation, “but left no time for a meaningful hearing” on whether al-Nashiri is fit for trial, Miller wrote, adding that the military judge has declined three times to stay the proceedings until the question of Nashiri’s competence was resolved.
Lawyers in the case were scheduled to travel to Guantanamo Bay on Saturday, Miller wrote. The military judge left open the possibility for a competency hearing on Monday morning, the same day the trial was scheduled to begin.
The trial has since been rescheduled to start a week later on Oct. 26, according to Ronald Flesvig, the spokesman for the Office of Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay.
The Office of the Chief Prosecutor for military commissions at Guantanamo Bay did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
Proceedings before the military commission were previously mired in delays and in legal challenges over admissibility of evidence from the torture-aided interrogations of Nashiri and over other circumstances of his trial and detention. Questions over the handling of Nashiri’s case, like those of other Guantanamo Bay detainees accused of planning and aiding al-Qaida’s 9/11 attacks on the United States, have led to constitutional debates and other problems.
Minnesota
Trump administration stopped sharing evidence in Good and Pretti killings, state officials say
The federal government has stopped sharing evidence with Minnesota authorities who are investigating the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers, state officials said in recent court filings.
Minnesota officials sued President Donald Trump’s administration in March for access to materials they said they needed to independently investigate the shootings during Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis earlier this year. The Trump administration has suggested that state prosecutors don’t have jurisdiction to investigate federal officers, while Minnesota officials have said they don’t trust the federal government to investigate itself.
The state is still seeking the cell phones of the officers involved in both shootings and recordings of key interviews.
State prosecutors announced in July that the federal government had begun turning over evidence in the cases, including police body camera video and hard drives containing statements. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said at the time that the state expected to receive “all the evidence.”
But Minnesota investigators said in October court filings that the transfer of evidence stopped soon after the July announcement. Moriarty said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota told her on Sept. 10 that evidence sharing would be on pause indefinitely “in light of challenges with D.C.,” according to the documents.
State prosecutors have again asked a judge to order federal agencies to hand over the evidence, arguing they “have identified no legal authority or rational basis justifying their obstruction of state criminal investigations.”
In a reply filed Tuesday, attorneys for the Justice Department argued it’s within their discretion to decline to share information with state authorities. They cited the department’s rules for responding to record requests, known as the Touhy regulations, which apply only when formal legal proceedings are underway. The attorneys said there was no active court case when Minnesota made its requests.
Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said in a legal declaration that federal authorities still have Good’s clothing, the cell phone of the officer who killed her and interview recordings that state authorities have never been able to view.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, while she was leaving a Minneapolis protest on Jan. 7. Bystander video shows Good in the driver’s seat of an SUV, repeatedly honking the horn, when masked immigration officers order her to step out of the vehicle. She starts to pull forward, and an officer standing in front of the car fires at her windshield. The officer, now standing about an arm’s length from the open window on the driver’s side, fires twice more, according to an analysis of the videos by The Associated Press and others.
Federal officials at the time said the officer acted in self-defense.
Good’s death and that of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse who was killed weeks later by a federal officer in Minneapolis, ignited nationwide protests against the Republican president’s immigration enforcement efforts.
No criminal charges have been filed in connection with the fatal shootings.
Evans said the federal government also has not shared a recorded statement from an officer who shot Pretti, the firearms used by the officers, their phones, projectiles and casings, and a gun taken from Pretti before he was shot.
Ohio
Courts block Republicans from killing a clean air law opposed by polluters
A Franklin County judge blocked last week a state law that eliminated Ohioans’ special legal powers to sue polluting neighbors like steel or other industrial plants that spit smoke, ash or other fumes into the sky.
This marks the second time in a short few years that environmental interests have managed to squash, at least temporarily, an effort to kill the air nuisance rule, which has been on the books in Ohio for more than 50 years.
The ruling last week from Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Julie Lynch states that lawmakers’ directive to state officials to repeal the air nuisance rule, which was slipped into the state budget as an 11th hour amendment, violated a provision of the state constitution that says legislation can span only a single subject.
“The Air Pollution Amendment has nothing to do with appropriations or state operations. Therefore, it violates the Constitution’s one-subject rule,” she said.
The air nuisance rule is fairly simple. It says that the emission or escape of smoke, ash, dust, grime, acid, fumes, gas, vapors or others that endanger health, safety or welfare of the public or property is an unlawful nuisance. Since 1974 the rule has been a part of Ohio’s comprehensive plan to comply with the federal Clean Air Act, the bedrock law protecting ambient air in the U.S.
Among the plaintiffs is a Cincinnati-area woman named Donna Ballinger, who has used the air nuisance rule to go after a neighboring, 2,800-acre steel plant now owned by Cleveland Cliffs in the Butler and Warren county area. Both the state and private citizens have used the law in the past as well, including one resident who won a $1.3 million settlement from a Dayton-area nuclear waste disposal company.
Removing the rule blocks plaintiffs from suing in federal court, and some of them argued that the new rules narrow, if not close, the door on state lawsuits as well.
Lynch’s ruling also killed off a related provision that prohibited the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency from considering data from community air monitoring devices to support the issuance of a fine or penalty. Those devices are privately owned sensors that some people deploy when they feel officials don’t believe their complaints.
A spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General’s office said they are reviewing the ruling and determining next steps. He didn’t answer whether the state plans to appeal the decision.
Environmental organizations like the Ohio Environmental Council and Case Western Reserve University’s Environmental Law Clinic that participated in the lawsuit hailed the ruling as a victory.
“The repeal of the Air Nuisance Rule has never been popular nor justified, and the State of Ohio’s own records show it’s a critical tool the public and state agencies use to hold big polluters accountable,” said Neil Waggoner, the midwest Beyond Coal campaign manager for the Sierra Club.
“The Court’s ruling is clear, and the State of Ohio should move expeditiously to end the current repeal effort and should not take any further action to undermine the rule again.”
In 2019, SunCoke, which makes coke used in the steelmaking process and has been repeatedly accused of air emissions violations in Ohio, hired a law firm that lobbied the U.S. EPA to remove the air nuisance rule from Ohio’s Clean Air Act plan.
Most such changes in administrative law require a fairly robust and transparent process. But as the company argued, and the EPA under President Donald Trump agreed, the decision to create the law in the first place was referred to as a technical “error,” which freed it up for a swift change.
Ballinger and a suite of different environmental advocacy organizations sued to stop the EPA. A mix of drawn out legal pressure and the change in presidential administration eventually led to the rule’s reinstatement in February 2025.
Around that time, lawmakers stepped in on the issue – drawing support from SunCoke, Cleveland Cliffs and the Chamber of Commerce – as they crafted the state budget.
Senators effectively neutered the rule by requiring the Ohio EPA to remove it from Ohio’s Clean Air Act plan. They did so via a late-breaking amendment passed just before the legislation passed. Senate Finance Chairman Jerry Cirino, a Kirtland Republican, has declined to say which senator proposed it.
