(MCT) — GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — With eastern Cuba under a Hurricane watch, a military judge opened then quickly recessed a pre-trial hearing in the USS Cole bombing case Tuesday with an order to force a boycotting terror suspect to court on Wednesday — “weather permitting.”

At issue is whether Saudi-born captive Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, 47, voluntarily agreed around dawn Tuesday to skip this week’s legal arguments in his death-penalty case as alleged architect of al-Qaida’s 2000 suicide bombing of the $1 billion destroyer off Aden, Yemen.