The Trump administration has chosen a Marine colonel who was wounded in Iraq in the 2004 battle of Falluja as the top military lawyer overseeing defense teams in war crimes cases at Guantánamo Bay.
The colonel, Johnathan H. Vaughn, currently oversees the Marine Corps defense organization, which is made up of military lawyers who represent Marines accused of military crimes.
If confirmed by the Senate, he would be elevated to brigadier general and oversee the offices of military and civilian teams that represent prisoners at Guantánamo Bay who are accused of committing war crimes.
They include Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of being the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and seven other former C.I.A. prisoners whom President George W. Bush ordered taken to Guantánamo in 2006 for trial.
The assignment comes at a sensitive time. Two new judges are traveling to Guantánamo Bay this month for the first hearings in the Sept. 11 case in nearly a year, even as defense lawyers seek to reinstate a plea agreement through federal court appeals.
Separately, an Army judge has set June 1 for jury selection in the capital case against a Saudi man who is accused of orchestrating the bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole off Yemen 25 years ago. It is Guantánamo’s longest-running death penalty case.
The White House sent Colonel Vaughn’s nomination to the Senate on Thursday. His official biography says he joined the Marines while he was at Case Western Reserve University School of Law two years before the Sept. 11 attacks. He has served in Marine roles on both U.S. coasts, and in Asia and the Middle East, with the Pentagon and the State Department.
The biography said he was one of the first lawyers assigned to an infantry battalion when he was wounded in action in Falluja in November 2004. A Marine spokesman was unable to elaborate on his injuries.
The job has been filled by a Navy captain since an Army general left the post in May.
Carol Rosenberg reports on the wartime prison and court at Guantánamo Bay. She has been covering the topic since the first detainees were brought to the U.S. base in 2002.
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