Families testify in USS Cole lawsuit

NORFOLK, Va. -- For the first time, the families of the 17 sailors killed when terrorists bombed the USS Cole in Yemen's Aden port are getting to tell a court about their heartbreak.

The families are suing the African nation of Sudan in U.S. District Court in Norfolk, where the now-repaired destroyer is based. They contend the Oct. 12, 2000, blast that ripped a hole in the ship's side could not have happened without financial and training support from Sudan, which the United States has listed as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1993.

Louge Gunn testified Tuesday as the trial got under way that he tossed his chair through a window, punched holes in his office walls until his fingers bled and contemplated suicide when he learned his son, Seaman Cherone Gunn, was among the dead.

"Why my son?" Gunn said he thought as he took a train from his Washington, D.C., office to southeast Virginia so he could be with his wife in Virginia Beach.

Lorrie Triplett described how hard it was for her to find out that the body of her husband, Andrew, had been torn into pieces.

"All I got back was an autopsy," she said.

Four more relatives of Cole sailors were expected to testify Wednesday when the trial resumes and likely will finish, said Andrew C. Hall, an attorney for the families.

Four experts on terrorism, including R. James Woolsey, CIA director from early 1993 to early 1995, also testified in person or by deposition Tuesday to support the families' position that al-Qaida needed Sudan's help to carry out the attack.

"It would not have been as easy--it might have been possible _ but it would not have been as easy," Woolsey said in a videotaped deposition, without Sudan providing economic support, places to train and false documents.

The experts testified that Sudan has given safe haven to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network since 1991--long before Yemeni operatives attacked the Cole.

They cited testimony from other trials, a declassified Canadian intelligence report, U.S. State Department reports and their own studies as they testified that Sudan let terrorist training camps operate within its borders and gave al-Qaida members diplomatic passports so they could travel without scrutiny and diplomatic pouches to ship explosives and weapons without being searched.

Lawyers already have given the judge depositions by about 50 people, including family members and experts.

The families are seeking $105 million in damages but potential damages could be reduced to not more than $35 million. Judge Robert G. Doumar repeated Tuesday that he is inclined to apply the Death on the High Seas Act, which permits compensation for economic losses but not for pain and suffering.

Sudan sought unsuccessfully to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that too much time had passed between the bombing and the filing of the lawsuit in 2004. Lawyers representing the Sudanese government did not offer opening statements Tuesday or question any witnesses.