Frustrated USS Cole judge retiring

MIAMI - The military judge who ordered a Marine general to serve 21 days confinement in a Guantanamo trailer park for contempt of court - a conviction that a federal court recently overturned - is retiring after 26 years of service, according to a July 5 e-mail response to a media query from McClatchy News Service. Air Force Col. Vance Spath “has an approved retirement date of Nov. 1, 2018,” AF spokesperson Brooke Brzozowske said in a one-sentence email response. She did not say when the colonel submitted his paperwork for retirement. Spath has been chief of the Air Force judiciary since April 2014. He has been serving as judge in the USS Cole case at “Gitmo” since the summer of 2014. Guantanamo detainee Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, held by the CIA from 2002-06, is accused of plotting al-Qaida’s suicide bombing of USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors off Aden, Yemen, on Oct. 12, 2000. He could face military execution, if convicted. In February, Spath declared his frustration over uncertainty of the mechanics of military commissions and halted all pretrial proceedings in the case, pending clarification of his authority from higher courts. “We’re done until a superior court tells me to keep going.” (Source: Miami Herald 07/05/18) Gulf Coast Note: At the time of the attack, three sailors aboard USS Cole had family members – one being a command master chief - living in Pensacola, Fla. Two of those three sailors aboard were among the injured. Following a 14-month restoration project, USS Cole departed from then-Northrop Grumman's shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., on April 19, 2002. The ship would return to its homeport in Norfolk, Va.