January 25, 2011: African Embassy Bomber Ghailani Sentenced to Life in Prison by US Court

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998). US District Judge Lewis Kaplan imposes the maximum sentence. In November 2010, Ghailani was convicted of conspiracy to destroy buildings or property of the United States. The verdict included a special finding that his conduct caused at least one death. But this was only one of the 285 charges against him, and he was acquitted of 273 counts of murder or attempted murder. Ghailani was captured in Pakistan in 2004 (see July 25-29, 2004), kept in the CIA’s secret prison system, and then was held in the US prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, starting in late 2006 (see September 2-3, 2006). He was transferred to the mainland of the US in 2009. He was the first former Guantanamo prison to be tried in a US civilian court, and his trial has been widely seen as a test case on whether other prisoners held outside the US legal system should be tried in US courts. Critics argue that Ghailani’s verdict shows the other prisoners still in Guantanamo should be tried in military tribunals there. But others point to the verdict as an example of the fairness of the US justice system. Prosecutors had been seeking life in prison for Ghailani, and that is the sentence he ultimately receives, even though he is only convicted of one count. His defense lawyers didn’t try to argue that Ghailani had no role in the embassy bombings, but instead argued that he was duped by other people and didn’t really know what he was doing. [Christian Science Monitor, 1/25/2011]