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The first civilian trial of a Guantanamo detainee ended in disarray Wednesday with an alleged Al Qaeda operative convicted on only a single conspiracy count the African embassy bombing trial.
Ahmed Ghailani, 36, was acquitted on 224 counts after being charged with helping a terror cell buy a truck and components for explosives used in a suicide bombing in Tanzania on Aug. 7, 1998.
The jury found Ghailani convicted of conspiring to destroy U.S. buildings and property. The charge carries a mandatory 20-year to life sentence because there was loss of life. Ghailani is due back in Manhattan federal court for sentencing on Jan. 25.
The case was considered a test-run for the politically-charged possibility of trying other detainees held at Guantanamo Bay in civilian courtrooms.
The verdict came after five days of sometimes stormy deliberations in which a juror asked to be removed on Monday which had raised the specter of a hung jury.
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 fled with a one-way ticket 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.
He was captured in 2004 in Pakistan and held by the CIA at a secret overseas camp. In 2006, he was transferred to Guantanamo and held until the decision last year to bring him to New York.
The defense has argued that Ghailani was a "dupe" who was in the dark about the plot. They called no witnesses to testify on his behalf.
Deliberations began last Wednesday following a month-long trial.
Ahmed Ghailani, 36, was acquitted on 224 counts after being charged with helping a terror cell buy a truck and components for explosives used in a suicide bombing in Tanzania on Aug. 7, 1998.
The jury found Ghailani convicted of conspiring to destroy U.S. buildings and property. The charge carries a mandatory 20-year to life sentence because there was loss of life. Ghailani is due back in Manhattan federal court for sentencing on Jan. 25.
The case was considered a test-run for the politically-charged possibility of trying other detainees held at Guantanamo Bay in civilian courtrooms.
The verdict came after five days of sometimes stormy deliberations in which a juror asked to be removed on Monday which had raised the specter of a hung jury.
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 fled with a one-way ticket 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.
He was captured in 2004 in Pakistan and held by the CIA at a secret overseas camp. In 2006, he was transferred to Guantanamo and held until the decision last year to bring him to New York.
The defense has argued that Ghailani was a "dupe" who was in the dark about the plot. They called no witnesses to testify on his behalf.
Deliberations began last Wednesday following a month-long trial.
Seriously? They convicted him of a charge that by its very nature requires intent (meaning that he knowingly agree on and to in the unlawful act) and b) an overt act in furtherance of said overt act. Then the jury proceeds to buy into his defense that he was nothing more than a dupe errand boy.
1) What does this result say about the future of other possible Gitmo trials? Will they be before civilian courts or military tribunals?
2) Will this event be an excuse for the Admin to throw Holder under the bus and shove him out of the cabinet?
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Apathy will come.
nothing I would really see a 17 year old kid getting worked up over. There's the dismissal of the indictment of Ted Stevens, the Black Panther election controversy here in Philly, and this trials for suspected terrorists thing... 
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