The first former Guantánamo detainee to be tried in civilian court was used by Al Qaeda to assist in the 1998 bombings of two United States embassies in East Africa, his lawyer told a jury in his closing argument on Tuesday.
The defendant, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, 36, faces charges of conspiracy, murder and other counts stemming from the attacks in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed 224 people and injured thousands.
The lawyer, Peter S. Quijano, argued that Mr. Ghailani was “used as a dupe the way Al Qaeda used the parade of dupes who testified before you.” He was referring to a number of Tanzanians who appeared as government witnesses and who Mr. Quijano suggested had also been used without their knowledge on the periphery of the plot.
Evidence at trial showed Mr. Ghailani had helped to buy the truck used to carry the bomb that blew up the embassy in Tanzania, and gas cylinders that were placed inside the truck to increase the blast’s intensity.
But Mr. Quijano said his client had assumed those purchases were routine commercial deals like those made all the time in the bustling marketplace section of Dar es Salaam called Kariakoo, frequented by Mr. Ghailani and other men looking to broker deals for commissions.
This was “Ahmed’s world,” Mr. Quijano said. “Why would anyone question buying anything?” he added. “It’s not like you’re buying a gun. You’re buying commercial items in a commercial temple that was Kariakoo.”
Mr. Quijano said the defense did not dispute the horrific nature of the embassy attacks, but added, “To wrongly convict Ahmed Ghailani would not be justice, but yet another tragedy that our country suffers at the hands of Al Qaeda.”
In a rebuttal, the prosecutor, Michael Farbiarz, roundly dismissed what he characterized as the defense’s “dupe theory.”
“The evidence shows — and it’s overwhelming — he’s not one of the people being lied to,” Mr. Farbiarz said. “He’s one of the liars.”
As an example, Mr. Farbiarz said Mr. Ghailani had lied to family and friends before the bombing, saying he was going to Yemen or Germany when in fact he was preparing to flee to Pakistan with a false passport on the day before the attack.
“He knows what’s coming the next day is mass murder — he’s been involved in preparing it, ” Mr. Farbiarz said.
Following Qaeda protocol, Mr. Farbiarz said: “Ahmed Ghailani literally left everything in his life behind. He left behind his friends and his job and his family, and he left behind his name” — a reference to the false passport.
Mr. Farbiarz also asked why, if Mr. Ghailani had truly been duped, he remained in hiding and did not report what he knew to the authorities. “Any dupe with half a conscience, after the attacks, would say, ‘I know who did it,’ ” Mr. Farbiarz said.
Late Tuesday, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court in Manhattan began instructing the jury, which is expected to begin deliberations on Wednesday.
The trial, which lasted about four weeks, has been widely watched as a test of the Obama administration’s goal of trying former Guantánamo detainees in the civilian system. Mr. Ghailani, who was captured in Pakistan in 2004, spent nearly five years in an overseas prison run by the Central Intelligence Agency, where his lawyers say he was tortured, and at Guantánamo, before he was moved into the civilian system last year.
The jury has not been told about that period of detention, and has heard a largely straightforward criminal case involving dozens of government witnesses and forensic findings.
(source:nytimes.com)
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