Acquittals In The Case Of The First Guantanamo Detainee Tried In The US
More than a month since the trial had begun and after five days of intense deliberation, the jury reached a verdict in the case of Ahmed Ghailani, the first detainee from the Guantanamo Bay military prison to have been transferred to the United States to stand a civilian trial. The 36 years-old Tanzanian from Zanzibar was accused of conspiracy, murder and other several counts, prosecution arguing that he played a major role in the car attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which resulted in 224 people killed and other thousands injured.
The federal jury acquitted Ahmed Ghailani on Wednesday of most of his charges. The anonymous jurors convicted him of only one count, conspiracy to destroy US property, and considered him not guilty for the other over 280 charges, including the murder of each of the 224 people who lost their life in the embassy attacks. On hearing the verdict, Ghailani rubbed his face, showed a big smile and then hugged his lawyers, while the US District Judge Lewis Kaplan thanked the jury and said that the verdict proved everyone that justice can be done ”calmly, deliberately and fairly by ordinary people — people who are not beholden to any government, even this one.”
Despite this surprising verdict, the Department of Justice spokesman Matthew Miller said that US authorities respect the jurorsʼ decision and even expressed his content that Ghailani still faces 20 years to life in prison. But the US Attorney Preet Bharara said that he will seek the maximum sentence of life without parole at the sentencing scheduled for January the 25th. As for the defense, the attorney Peter Quijano said that he is satisfied with the acquittals, but, nevertheless, he would appeal the one conviction for he was convinced that his client was innocent of all the charges. While Ahmed Ghailani himself believed he got a fair trial.
During the trial, which lasted only one month, the prosecution described Ghailani as a cold-blooded terrorist. They argued that the Tanzanian helped an al-Qaeda cell by buying a truck and the components of the bombs used to blow up the US embassies in Dar es Salam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, killing 12 US citizens and other over 200 natives. And to cover his tracks and to avoid being brought to justice, Ghailani fled to Pakistan under an alias just one day before the attacks, along with other al-Qaeda members. From there he went to Afghanistan, working as a cook and later as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, before being captured by the US authorities in 2004. For two years he was held in secret CIA overseas prisons and then transferred to Guantanamo Bay, where he spent another four years. And eventually he was brought to the United States to face a civilian trial for his involvement in the bombings.
Among the evidence produced by the prosecution there were several testimonies of former al-Qaeda members, who described how Ghailani bought the gas tanks used to manufacture the bombs with cash supplied by the network, how the FBI found a blasting cap hidden is his room or how the Tanzanian lied to his friends and family about his getaway, telling them that he going to Yemen to star a fresh life. And the prosecution also tried to underline his connection to Osama bin Laden, other witnesses speaking of how bin Laden took al-Qaeda in a more radical direction with a 1998 fatwa, or religious act, that urged all Muslims to rise up and ”kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they can find it.”
The defense, on the other hand, named Ahmed Ghailani a dupe, who was tricked and used by al-Qaeda to help them, but in fact he knew nothing of their dark intentions. The defense attorney admitted Ghailani having bought the components of the bombs, but argued that his client never imagined that the truck or the gas tanks would be used for making explosives and blowing up embassies. He also named the FBI investigation too chaotic to produce reliable evidence, as they „trampled all over” unsecured crime scenes during searches in Tanzania and compromised all the evidence. And, in the end, this strategy proved to be the winning one, as the jurors dropped most of the convictions on Ghailani.
But this trial has far much deeper implications for the United States authorities, as it had been seen as a test for President Barack Obama’s administration, who intends to transfer other Gitmo detainees to be tried in the United States. Among which Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the man accused of being the mastermind behind the attacks against World Trade Center on September the 11th, and four of his accomplices. But President Obamaʼs decision faced a stiff opposition from both the Republicans and the Democrats and the verdict in the Ahmed Ghailani case gave his enemies even more arguments.
US Representative Pete Hoekstra, top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said, after hearing of the verdict, that is did nothing but to prove that the decision to try Gitmo detainess in civilians courts ”was a mistake and would not work”. And that if the Obama administration failed even with this easy case, how could it deal with the more difficult cases to come, Hoekstra argued. US Representative Peter King, a New York Republican who’s the ranking minority leader of the Homeland Security Committee, named the verdict a “wake-up call” for the White House.
Ahmed Ghailaniʼs trial was the second trial involving the 1998 embassy attacks. Almost ten year ago other four al-Qaeda operatives were convicted of participating in the same conspiracy and eventually they were sentenced to life in prison.
