Guantanamo Detainee Sentenced to Life for Africa Bombings
New York (CNN) -- A federal judge sentenced Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani to life without parole on Tuesday for his role in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed 224 people and left thousands wounded. He is the first Guantanamo detainee tried in U.S. civilian court, having been convicted by a federal jury in November on a single conspiracy charge to destroy buildings and property at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. "Finally, 12 1/2 years after those devastating and despicable attacks, Ahmed Ghailani will pay for his crimes," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara told reporters. Ghailani was acquitted of the remaining 284 counts of conspiracy and terrorism-related charges, including conspiring to kill U.S. citizens and to use weapons of mass destruction. He had faced a minimum of 20 years in prison, but instead received a life sentence. Ghailani, a 36-year-old Tanzanian, never took the stand. The trial, considered a test for the Obama administration, which had maintained that it could try some terrorism suspects in civilian courts, coincides with both the president's State of the Union address and reports of a possible increase in the use of military commissions. On the eve of the trial, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan excluded testimony from a witness that prosecutors said could provide evidence of Ghailani's involvement in the bomb plot, after learning of the witness' coerced interrogation at a CIA-run detention facility abroad. The move raised questions over future convictions based on clandestine information gathering, widening the debate over the use of civilian courts for detainees, including alleged September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Ghailani was captured in Pakistan in 2004 after training with al-Qaeda leaders in the region, where the government says he became a bodyguard and cook for Osama bin Laden. Ghailani was interrogated for two years under CIA supervision in an effort to obtain information for use in defending U.S. interests, according to court documents. He was later moved to the U.S. naval base in Cuba where he was detained for nearly three years before making his latest transfer to federal custody in New York, the documents said. Throughout the trial, the defense portrayed Ghailani as a man with local knowledge of Tanzania who was exploited by al Qaeda, arguing that Ghailani's cumulative detention in U.S. custody deprived him of a speedy trial. The government rejected the claim that Ghailani was duped into participating, pointing to evidence that he obtained gas tanks in Tanzania and noting his presence in Mombasa, Kenya, with members of the bomb plot. The case comes against the background of Ghailani's detention as an "unlawful enemy combatant," considered hostile to U.S. interests and its armed forces abroad. Several dozen high-value detainees have been identified as such by the Bush and Obama administrations, while many face the prospect of indefinite incarceration and possible trial before a military commission or civilian federal court.