US jury convicts Guantanamo man

The first Guantanamo detainee to face a civilian trial has been acquitted
of most charges that he helped unleash death and destruction on two US
embassies in Africa in 1998- an opening salvo in al Qaida's campaign to kill Americans.
A federal jury convicted Ahmed Ghailani of one count of conspiracy but
acquitted him of all other counts, including murder and murderconspiracy,
in the embassy bombings.The anonymous federal jury in New York deliberated
for seven days, with a juror writing a note to the judge saying she felt
threatened by other jurors.
Prosecutors had branded Ghailani a cold-blooded terrorist. The defence
portrayed him as a clueless errand boy, exploited by senior al Qaida
operatives and framed by evidence from contaminated crime scenes.
The trial in a lower Manhattan courthouse had been viewed as a possible
test case for the Obama administration's aim of putting other terror
detainees - including self-professed September 11 mastermind Khalid
Sheik Mohammed and four other terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba - on trial on US soil.Ghailani's prosecution also demonstrated
some of the constitutional challenges the government would face if that
happens. On the eve of his trial last month, the judge barred the government
from calling a key witness because the witness had been identified while
Ghailani was being held at a secret CIA camp where harsh interrogation
techniques were used.After briefly considering an appeal of that ruling,
prosecutors forged ahead with a case honed a decade ago in the prosecution
of four other men charged in the same attacks in Tanzania and Kenya.
All were convicted in the same court and sentenced to life terms.Prosecutors
had alleged that Ghailani helped an al Qaida cell to buy a truck and
components for explosives used in a suicide bombing in his native Tanzania
on August 7, 1998. The attack in Dar es Salaam and a nearly simultaneous
bombing in Nairobi, Kenya, killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.
The day before the bombings, Ghailani boarded a one-way flight to Pakistan
under an alias, prosecutors said. While on the run, he spent time in
Afghanistan as a cook and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden and later as a
document forger for al Qaida, authorities said.Despite losing its key
witness, the government was given broad latitude to reference al Qaida and
bin Laden. It did - again and again. "This is Ahmed Ghailani. This is al
Qaida. This is a terrorist. This is a killer," Assistant US Attorney Harry
Chernoff said in closing arguments.The defence never contested that
Ghailani knew some of the plotters. But it claimed he was in the dark about
their sinister intentions. "Call him a fall guy. Call him a pawn," lawyer
Peter Quijano said in his closing argument. "But don't call him guilty."