Members of the US public will be allowed to watch a broadcast of Wednesday's arrangment hearing for a Guantanamo prisoner accused of masterminding a deadly attack on a US Navy warship, but only if they can get to an army base in Maryland by Wednesday morning.
The chief judge in the Guantanamo war crimes tribunal signed an order on Monday granting permission for the public to view the closed-circuit broadcast being beamed to the Fort Meade Army base in Maryland.
The order was made public late on Tuesday, giving potential viewers little notice.
Defendant Abd al Rahim al Nashiri is to be arraigned at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba on death-penalty charges that include murder, attempted murder, conspiracy and terrorism.
The 46-year-old Saudi captive is accused of conspiring with al-Qaeda to launch the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Adan.
Suicide bombers detonated a boat full of explosives alongside the Cole and blew a gaping hole in its side, killing 17 US sailors and wounding three dozen more.
Nashiri's hearing in the military tribunal at the remote base in eastern Cuba will be the first beamed to the United States for viewing, albeit at restricted sites.
Relatives of the dead and wounded sailors were invited to watch at a private screening at the Navy base in Norfolk, Virginia, the Cole's home port. Journalists who could not make the trip to Guantanamo for the hearing were notified earlier that they could watch it at Fort Meade.
The Guantanamo judge, Army Colonel James Pohl, granted prosecutors' request to widen the access to additional spectators "due to the serious nature of the crimes alleged and the historic significance" of the prosecution.
The hearing will be the first for Nashiri, an alleged high-level al-Qaeda operative who was captured in 2002 in Dubai and held in secret CIA prisons before being sent to Guantanamo in 2006. The CIA has acknowledged subjecting him to mock executions and the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, which defense lawyers called torture.
Pentagon officials said US congressional staffers planned to take advantage of the invitation to watch the hearing from Fort Meade, as did other military lawyers.
They will face the same restrictions imposed at Guantanamo, namely that they may not photograph or record any part of the proceedings.
The Guantanamo tribunals for suspected terrorists have been widely criticized as secretive and rigged to convict.
Brigadier General Mark Martins, who took over as Guantanamo's chief prosecutor six weeks ago, said the military was addressing some of those issues by making Guantanamo court documents and transcripts more readily available and through the broadcasts just announced.
"The Supreme Court has said that the people of an open society do not demand infallibility of their institutions, but it is difficult for them to accept what they cannot observe," Martins told journalists at Guantanamo. "Transparency is good, democracy requires it."
