NORFOLK, Va. – The path to Yemen’s Aden Harbor and the target, the USS Cole, began at a 20-acre al-Qaida training camp north of the Sudan capital of Khartoum.

There, terrorists from Yemen practiced with bombs and weapons, following the orders of senior al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden. The leaders had issued a fatwa, or religious decree, calling for attacks on U.S. targets parked in Islamic lands.

The Norfolk-based destroyer Cole would become a perfect target. Military ships frequently refueled in Yemen. Travel between Sudan and Yemen was easy for the terrorists. They could even carry explosives inside diplomatic pouches, which aren’t subject to security checks.

On Oct. 12, 2000, two Yemeni terrorists trained in Sudan pulled up next to the Cole in a small boat, waved hello at a U.S. sailor standing watch, then blew themselves up, punching a 40-foot hole in the side of the destroyer.

Seventeen sailors died and 39 were injured.

Sudan will stand trial this week in Norfolk federal court where the families of the 17 sailors are seeking to hold the African nation accountable for the loss of their loved ones. They seek millions of dollars in damages – to be paid with about $68 million in Sudanese assets frozen by the U.S. government.

At previous hearings since the case was filed two and a half years ago, U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar has voiced his frustration with Sudan’s attorneys, who have refused to address the merits of the case.

Sudan is represented by two attorneys with the Norfolk law firm Hunton & Williams. They have declined to comment.

The attorneys for the families say they have a goal larger than cash payments.

“If these cases make it prohibitively expensive to a nation, then hopefully that will be the beginning of the end of terrorism,” said Miami attorney Andrew Hall, one of four representing the families.

Hall and his team have successfully sued other nations that have supported terrorists or condoned their activities, including Libya, Cuba, Iran and Iraq.

However, Hall said, this will be the first time a country will be held responsible for the actions of a terrorist group against a U.S. government instrument, namely a warship.

In 1991, Sudan’s leaders, including President Omar al-Bashir, welcomed bin Laden and his followers into the country with open arms.

Together, they struck a deal: Sudan agreed to provide cover, munitions and safe travel to al-Qaida. In return, al-Qaida would provide assistance in Sudan’s civil war against Christians in the southern end of the country.

Sudan even hosted annual terrorism conferences where members of al-Qaida, Hezbollah and Hamas gathered to discuss attack methods and funding. These conferences continued through 2005, according to the lawsuit.

“Sudan hosted this conference each year for the purpose of bridging the Islamic religious gaps and forming a pan-Islamic terrorist force,” the suit states, “to galvanize against their common enemy, the United States.”

The lawyers for the Cole families have laid out in court papers a detailed look at al-Qaida’s operations in Sudan and its links to the Sudanese government. Here are key points from those papers:

Bin Laden started several businesses in Sudan, including a construction company that built a road linking Khartoum, the capital, with the Port of Sudan on the Red Sea. Bin Laden kept a fleet of boats at the port.

“The company worked directly with Sudanese military officials to transport terrorists and provide them with training” at al-Qaida training camps in northern Sudan, the lawsuit states.

Bin Laden also established an import-export business that “secured a near monopoly over Sudan’s major agricultural exports” as well as a bank that bin Laden partly owned with a $50 million investment, the suit says.

Other companies linking bin Laden and the government of Sudan provided “cover for the procurement of explosives, weapons and chemicals” and a “business front for money laundering,” the papers say.

These banking and business systems had relaxed record-keeping and had little oversight, allowing al-Qaida to move money in and out of Sudan with ease. The terrorists even purchased an airplane in the United States and used it to transport weapons.

When the United States began freezing al-Qaida assets in the late 1990s, bin Laden turned to gold and diamonds to fund his activities because they were easier to transport and hide. Al-Qaida used gold as the main source of financing for the Cole attack.

The attorneys said they will rely on expert witnesses, such as Steven Emerson of The Investigative Project, a Washington-based company that studies terrorist financing and practices, and former CIA Director James Woolsey.

The Sudanese government also assisted al-Qaida by providing diplomatic passports that allowed the terrorists to travel in and out of the country without passing security checks, according to the suit.

“A diplomatic passport is tantamount to a free license to carry anything, including weapons, to any part of the world,” the lawsuit says. Sudan also provided diplomatic pouches that were not subject to search at air and sea ports, it says.

The lawsuit alleges that at least one diplomatic pouch was used to transport explosives to Yemen from Sudan.

The Sudanese government also ordered its embassies around the world to assist al-Qaida with passports and fundraising. Sudan’s embassy in New York provided “logistical assistance to the bombers of the World Trade Center in 1993,” the suit says, without elaboration.

Sudan’s military worked with al-Qaida, providing at least four crates of explosives and weapons that were stored on a farm owned by bin Laden.

The explosives and weapons were shipped to Yemen from the Port of Sudan.

Bin Laden loyalist Abdul Majid al-Zindani, who is designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as a sponsor of terrorism, coordinated the attack on the Cole from Sudan and Yemen, the lawsuit says.

Al-Zindani, who still lives in Yemen, selected the two bombers and others from Yemen who took part in the attack, the suit says.

Another al-Qaida leader and key planner in the Cole attack, Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, who at the time was the group’s chief of operations in Yemen, was killed in 2002 by a U.S. Hellfire missile, launched over Yemen by a pilotless Predator aircraft.

Others involved in the attack were tried and convicted in Yemen, but U.S. authorities have never prosecuted anyone connected to the bombing.

Since the Cole attack, Sudanese officials have acknowledged their support of bin Laden, according to news reports, but have since pledged to rid the country of al-Qaida and other terrorists. Bin Laden is now believed to be living along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

“There is no indication that al-Qaida elements have had a presence in Sudan with the knowledge and consent of the Sudanese government for at least the past five years,” the U.S. State Department said in a 2006 report.

Cole family attorneys, however, disagree.

Al-Qaida “built its resources of manpower, logistical planning, expertise and knowledge over the years it was given safe haven and refuge in Sudan, beginning in 1991 and continuing through the present,” the attorneys said in court papers filed earlier this year.

The trial, scheduled to begin Tuesday, is expected to last two to three days.

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