Americas

Home page

Americas

New York holds first civilian trial of ex-Guantanamo prisoner

13 October 2010 04:15 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The first civilian trial of a former inmate of the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba was held in New York on Tuesday, APA reports quoting news.xinhuanet.com website.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian accused of a key role in the killing of 224 people during the bombings against two US embassies in Africa in 1998, is the first former Guantanamo Bay detainee to be tried on terror charges in a civilian court.

Prosecutors will proceed without the testimony of a key witness. A judge ruled last week that the witness must be excluded, because officials only learned about him as a direct result of statements Ghailani made while being interrogated in a secret CIA-run jail overseas.

Ghailani is facing charges of conspiracy, murder, attempted use of weapons of mass destruction and other charges stemming from the two bombing attacks on U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998.

His trial is expected to last three to six months. If convicted, Ghailani could face life in prison.

Ghailani was listed on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list from the time it was created in 2001 until he was captured in Pakistan in 2004.

He was taken to the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities in Cuba in 2006, where he remained until the Obama administration transferred him on June 9, 2009 to the New York federal court to stand trial for his alleged role in the embassy bombing.