In a stunning verdict, a federal jury in the Southern District last night acquitted accused embassy bomber Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani on all but one of 285 counts in the twin bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.
Clearing the Tanzanian native of four conspiracies and the murder of 224 people in the near-simultaneous bombings of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on Aug. 7, 1998, the jury in Judge Lewis A. Kaplan's courtroom shocked prosecutors and defense lawyers alike with its verdict.
But the prosecution nonetheless succeeded in tying Mr. Ghailani to the bombings. The lone guilty verdict was declared on Count 5, a conspiracy to destroy buildings and property of the United States by means of an explosive. The jury answered a follow-up question in the affirmative, finding that Mr. Ghailani's conduct in Count 5 "directly or proximately caused death to a person other than a co-conspirator."
Mr. Ghailani, 36, faces a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison and a maximum of life when he is sentenced on Jan. 25.
The diminutive Mr. Ghailani, dressed in a white shirt and tie, had entered the courtroom in handcuffs with his trademark shy smile. Minutes later, he was wiping his hand across his face in relief and hugging and shaking hands with the defense team led by Peter Quijano, Michael Bachrach, Steve Zissou and Anna Sideris.
The prosecution team of Southern District Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael Farbiarz, Harry Chernoff, Nicholas Lewin and Sean Buckley congratulated the defense team and also took handshakes from U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
Mr. Ghailani is the first former Guantánamo detainee to be moved into the civilian justice system and tried on terrorism charges, and his long route to the Southern District and several pretrial rulings may have helped shape the verdict reached yesterday.
Mr. Ghailani allegedly worked with al-Qaida's East African cell that was acting on Osama bin Laden's instructions to kill Americans anywhere in the world. More specifically, prosecutors charged, he bought the truck and the gas tanks used in the Tanzanian explosion.
The day before the bombings, they argued to the jury, Mr. Ghailani fled Kenya on a flight to Karachi, Pakistan. But prosecutors were not allowed to argue to the jury their claim that Mr. Ghailani worked directly for Mr. bin Laden until his capture in 2004.
Once captured, Mr. Ghailani was taken to a secret CIA site and questioned by agents using what the government called "enhanced interrogation techniques" and the defense calls "torture."
Because of the taint on any information derived from Mr. Ghailani during the interrogation, the government vowed not to use his statements against him at trial unless the defense put them in issue.
But the prosecution plowed ahead in its attempt to use one piece of information gleaned from the CIA interrogation—the identity and location of Hussein Abebe, a Tanzanian who claims he sold Mr. Ghailani the explosives used in the bombing in Dar es Salaam.
Prosecutors were dealt a major blow pretrial when Judge Kaplan ruled that Mr. Abebe, their only direct witness who could tie Mr. Ghailani to the bombings, could not testify. Facing a serious delay in a trial they had been teeing up for over a year, the government eschewed an appeal of that ruling and decided to complete jury selection and move on.
The prosecution worked with what it had, and on Monday, it appeared to spectators and the defense, that as many as 11 jurors were ready to vote to convict, as one juror sent a note to the judge saying she had made up her mind and was being attacked for her convictions by her fellow jurors.
Yesterday's result was clearly a surprise to a defense that had argued their client was nothing more than a dupe running errands for a conspiracy he never joined and knew nothing about. Mr. Quijano slumped in his chair as the verdict was about to be read, but he bolted upright when the first "not guilty" was pronounced on the initial conspiracy count—the conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals.
Still the prosecution got their conviction in a trial that has been closely monitored by all sides in the debate over whether accused terrorists should be tried by military commission or in Article III courts.
Judge Kaplan addressed the jury briefly before dismissal, praising them for proving that "American justice can be rendered calmly, deliberately and fairly by ordinary people, people who are not beholden to any government, even this one."
Outside the courthouse, Mr. Quijano lauded the jury for delivering its verdict in the shadow of the World Trade Center. He added that the defense still believes Mr. Ghailani is innocent of all charges, and it plans to appeal.
Four men were convicted in the Southern District in 2001 in the embassy bombing conspiracy and they are serving life sentences.
@|Mark Hamblett can be reached at mhamblett@alm.com.Subscribe to New York Law Journal
No comments:
Post a Comment