A Missile Alert Half a World Away Interrupts Court Hearing at Guantánamo

Over the years, hurricanes, power outages and medical emergencies have shut down war crimes court hearings at Guantánamo Bay. On Tuesday, a missile alert in the United Arab Emirates presumably related to the U.S.-Iranian war half a world away abruptly halted a session. An Al Qaeda defector in Dubai, Aimen Dean, was testifying via video feed from the U.S. consulate there when the emergency occurred. An F.B.I. agent appeared on the video screen and hustled Mr. Dean away, announcing, “I’m sorry we have a missile alert; we have to go to a safe place.” Mr. Dean was testifying about Al Qaeda’s bombing techniques in the 1990s in a pretrial hearing in the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri , who is accused of orchestrating the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole off Yemen on Oct. 12, 2000. Both men are Saudi citizens. “Obviously everyone fled the building,” the military judge, Col. Matthew Fitzgerald, announced at Guantánamo soon after the witness vanished from a large screen in the courtroom. “This could be five minutes. It could be five hours. We could be done for the day.” The emergency ended in about 15 minutes with Mr. Dean resuming his testimony without explanation. The U.A.E.’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement that its air defense systems “detected a missile threat directly towards the country” and any sounds people heard were “the result of air defense interceptions.” At this week’s hearing, prosecutors are previewing proposed expert testimony for the trial, which is scheduled to start with jury selection in October — 26 years after the attack. Seventeen American sailors were killed in the suicide bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer, which was on a resupply visit at Aden Harbor in Yemen. We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in . Want all of The Times? Subscribe .