Embattled USS Cole & Fleet Week

The embattled USS Cole (DDG-67) will be participating in Fleet Week activities at Port Everglades, Fla., through May 9. USS Cole was the ship – with three Pensacola, Fla.-family connections aboard – that was nearly sunk in the port of Aden, Yemen, by terrorists’ explosives placed against its hull in October 2000. Seventeen sailors were killed. A group of detainees are awaiting trial at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility for allegedly planning the bombing - Walid bin Attash and Rhim Hussein al-Nashiri. But Mashur Abdallah Ahmed al Sabri, one of the other members of the alleged Cole cell, who was detained at ‘Gitmo’, was released to the government of Saudi Arabia on April 16 by the U.S. Defense Department. (Source: The Sextant 04/29/16) Gulf Coast Maritime Note: USS Cole was built by Ingalls Shipbuilding at Pascagoula, Miss. It was commissioned at Port Everglades.