The first Guantanamo Bay detainee to face trial in the United States has been flown into New York, as Barack Obama moves to close down the controversial prison camp.
Ahmed Ghailani, a Tanzanian, is to be tried over the near-simultaneous bombing of two US embassies in East Africa on August 7, 1998, in which more than 200 people were killed, 12 of them American. The attacks were blamed on the al-Qaeda terror network for whom Mr Ghailani was allegedly an explosives expert.
Justice Department officials said that Mr Ghailani arrived in New York in the early hours under military escort and was handed into the custody of US marshalls, who took him to the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in Manhattan. He is scheduled to appear in Manhattan federal court later today.
“With his appearance in federal court today, Ahmed Ghailani is being held accountable for his alleged role in the bombing of US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and the murder of 224 people,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.
“The Justice Department has a long history of securely detaining and successfully prosecuting terror suspects through the criminal justice system, and we will bring that experience to bear in seeking justice in this case.”
The trial will be an important test case for the Obama administration’s plan to close the detention centre at Guantanamo by the end of this year and bring some of the suspects to trial.
Mr Ghailani, who is in his mid-to-late thirties, was indicted in 1998 for the co-ordinated bomb attacks on the US missions in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.
US officials charge that he began his terrorist career on a bicycle delivering bomb parts and rose through the al-Qaeda ranks to become a bodyguard to Osama bin Laden.
He was in his twenties when, prosecutors allege, he helped terrorists build one of the bombs used in the attacks, but left Africa just before the bombings. After the attacks he is said to have worked for al-Qaeda as a document forger, trainer at a terror camp and bodyguard to bin Laden, according to military prosecutors.
He was categorised as a high-value detainee by US authorities after he was captured in Pakistan in 2004 and was transferred to the detention centre at the US naval base on Cuba two years later.
Since his capture, Mr Ghailani has denied knowing the TNT and oxygen tanks he delivered would be used to make a bomb. He also denied buying a vehicle used in one of the attacks, insisting that he could not drive.
The Obama administration's attempts to try him in the US criminal justice system comes despite despite claims by Republican critics that to do so would endanger American lives. Some lawmakers have opposed bringing any Guantanamo detainees to the US for trial, even in heavily guarded settings.
Last month, President Obama said that preventing Ghailani from coming to US soil “would prevent his trial and conviction - and after over a decade, it is time to finally see that justice is served, and that is what we intend to do.”
Relatives of those killed in the embassy attacks have supported the decision to bring Mr Ghailani to the US for trial. Many of those relatives say that since the 2001 terror attacks, the earlier victims of al-Qaeda have been forgotten.
Yet the President faces pressure from across the political spectrum on his plan to close the detention centre.
Democrats have said they want to see the President’s plan for closing the base before approving money to finance it, while Republicans are fighting to keep Guantanamo open.
The decision to try Mr Ghailani in New York also revives a long-dormant case charging bin Laden and top al-Qaeda leadership with plotting the embassy attacks.
The attacks prompted then-President Bill Clinton to launch cruise missile attacks two weeks later on bin Laden’s Afghan camps. Four other men have been tried and convicted in the New York courthouse for their roles in the embassy attacks. All were sentenced to life in prison.
Source:The times
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