FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) — A Guantanamo Bay prisoner pleaded guilty Thursday to war crime charges in a pretrial deal aimed at limiting his sentence to 15 years for helping plan the suicide bombing of an oil tanker off Yemen in 2002 that killed a crewman and wounded a dozen others.

The deal was widely expected to give him time to testify against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who also faces terror charges in the tanker bombing and for allegedly orchestrating the 2000 al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden that killed 17 sailors and wounded 37.