JOIN USAhmed Ghailani will become the first Guantanamo detainee to go on trial in a civilian US court. He was to make an appearance in federal court in Manhattan later in the day, the department said in a statement.
Ghailani, a Tanzanian who had been held at the US naval base in Cuba since September 2006, arrived in New York early Tuesday under escort from the US Marshals Service.
The Justice Department said he faced 286 counts, including conspiring with Osama bin Laden and other members of al Qaeda to kill Americans anywhere in the world, and separate charges of murder for the deaths of each of the 224 people killed in the August 7, 1998, US Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya.
Several of the counts against Ghailani, including murder of US employees at the embassies and use and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction against US nationals, carry maximum sentences of death or life in prison.
“The Justice Department has a long history of securely detaining and successfully prosecuting terror suspects through the criminal justice system, and we will bring that experience to bear in seeking justice in this case,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in the statement.
African bombings
Eleven people were killed and at least 85 were wounded in the Tanzania bombing and 213 people were killed in Kenya.
The decision to bring Ghailani to trial in New York stemmed from a review of the 240 foreign terrorism suspects held at the prison in Cuba President Barack Obama has ordered the Guantanamo Bay prison, set up after the September 11, 2001, attacks, closed by the end of January.
Members of Congress object to transferring any of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners to the United States, saying it would put American security at risk even if they were jailed.
The Guantanamo Review Task Force looked at Ghailani’s case and as a result it was referred to the Justice Department for prosecution in the Southern District of New York, the Justice Department said.
Ghailani is charged with helping to buy a truck and oxygen and acetylene tanks used in the Tanzania bombing, and of loading boxes of TNT, detonators, and other equipment into the back of the truck in the weeks immediately before the bombing.