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Jury Continues Deliberations in Trial of Former Guantanamo Detainee

   Larry Freund | New York 17 November 2010
   Assistant  U.S. Attorney Nicholas Lewin, foreground, gives his opening
   statement to the jury in the trial of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, left, in
   Manhattan Federal Court in New York, 12 Oct 2010

Photo: AP

   Assistant  U.S. Attorney Nicholas Lewin, foreground, gives his opening
   statement to the jury in the trial of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, left, in
   Manhattan Federal Court in New York, 12 Oct 2010

   The  jury  in  the  New York City trial of accused Tanzanian terrorist
   Ahmed  Ghailani  continued  its  deliberations  on Wednesday, with new
   instructions from the presiding judge.
   Judge  Lewis  Kaplan spent several minutes reading to the jurors a set
   of  new  legal  instructions  about  the requirements for convicting a
   defendant  of participating in a criminal conspiracy.  Ahmed Ghailani
   is  accused  of  joining in a plot that led to the 1998 bombing of the
   U.S.  embassies  in Tanzania and Kenya.  The blasts killed 224 people
   in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, including 12 Americans.
   Ghailani  is  accused by government prosecutors of conspiring to carry
   out the attacks by purchasing a truck and gas cylinders.  His lawyers
   have argued that he was an innocent dupe of the al-Qaida organizers of
   the bombings and that he had no prior knowledge of their plans.
   The  12  jurors  have been deliberating the case in private since last
   week,  and  they have sent occasional notes to Judge Kaplan on various
   subjects.   On  Tuesday,  one  note  inquired  about  the  details of
   conspiracy  law.  After considering the issue overnight and listening
   to  the opinions of prosecution and defense attorneys, Kaplan read his
   guidance.
   Under  U.S. law, prosecutors must prove that a defendant willfully and
   knowingly  took  part  in  a plot.  Defense attorneys in the Ghailani
   trial  have maintained that the 36-year-old Tanzanian had no knowledge
   of the plans to bomb the embassies.
   The  judge  commented  before  the jury entered the courtroom that the
   jurors  seem  to have moved in their deliberations beyond the question
   of Ghailani's participation in the plot to the key issue of whether he
   knew of the conspiracy.
   In an earlier note, a juror asked to be removed from the trial because
   she  felt  she  was  being  attacked  by  other  jurors because of her
   opinions.  The judge refused to remove the juror and rejected defense
   attorney arguments for a mistrial.
   This  is the first trial in a U.S. civilian court of a former detainee
   from  the  U.S.  military  detention  center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.Â
   Ghailani  was  arrested in Pakistan in 2004 and was transferred to the
   center in 2006.  He faces 285 separate charges in connection with the
   embassy bombings, including criminal conspiracy and murder.  He could
   face life in prison, if convicted.

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