Ahmed Ghailani

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (أحمد خلفان الغيلاني, Aḥmad Khalifān al-Ghaīlānī; born April 13, 1974) is a Tanzanian conspirator of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization convicted for his role in the bombing of embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Ghailani was born on April 13, 1974, in Zanzibar, Tanzania and is a Tanzanian citizen.

He speaks Swahili and had served as a tabligh, a Muslim traveling preacher.

The Denver Post printed a profile of Jeffrey Colwell, a former colonel in the United States Marine Corps, who had prepared to defend Ghailani, when he was in military custody.

Colwell visited Ghailani's family in Tanzania, in addition to getting to know Ghailani himself.

According to Colwell "he was a young kid at that time who was sort of lured and used as a pawn."

After joining al-Qaeda, he became an explosives expert and was assigned to obtain the bomb components in Dar es Salaam according to convicted fellow Embassy bombing conspirators Mohammed Sadiq Odeh and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed.

This role was complicated by the fact that Ghailani could not drive so whatever purchases were too large or heavy for his bicycle such as oxygen and acetylene tanks would have to be picked up by another person in a car.

He was indicted in the United States as a participant in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings.

Ghailani was in Nairobi, Kenya by August 6, 1998, where he is thought to have rented a room at the Hilltop Hotel used for meetings by the bombers and flew to Karachi on a Kenya Airways flight before the bombs exploded.

At some time in Pakistan or Afghanistan, he married an Uzbek.

The other alleged terrorists named on that date were Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who had also been earlier listed with Ghailani by the FBI as a Most Wanted Terrorist for the 1998 embassy attack, and Abderraouf Jdey, Amer El-Maati, Aafia Siddiqui, Adam Yahiye Gadahn, and Adnan G. El Shukrijumah.

He was on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list from its inception in October 2001.

Four others were sentenced to life in prison in a 2001 trial in Manhattan federal court.

Osama bin Laden was also named in the indictment.

Abderraouf Jdey was already on the FBI Seeking Information – War on Terrorism list since January 17, 2002, to which the other four were added as well.

American Democrats labeled the warning "suspicious".

Dismissing the threat, they claimed it was solely to divert attention from President Bush's plummeting poll numbers and to push the failings of the Invasion of Iraq off the front page.

CSIS director Reid Morden voiced similar concerns, saying it seemed more like "election year" politics, than an actual threat—and The New York Times pointed out that one day before the announcement, they had been told by the Department of Homeland Security that there were no current risks.

His arrest was made by the Intelligence Bureau Pakistan in a raid with police commandos.

On May 26, 2004, United States Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that reports indicated that Ghailani was one of seven al-Qaeda members who were planning a terrorist action for the summer or fall of 2004.

On July 25, 2004, a nearly eight-hour battle ensued in the town of Gujrat, Pakistan between security officials and terrorists.

Ghailani and thirteen others, included his wife and children, were arrested.

A police officer was wounded in the battle.

Pakistani Interior Minister Makhdoom Faisal Saleh Hayat announced the capture of Ghailani on July 29, 2004.

The US Government had offered a $5,000,000 USD bounty offered for information leading to the arrest of Ghailani.

Some press reports (including the American magazine New Republic ) questioned whether the timing of the announcement of Ghailani's capture was politically motivated.

The announcement was made just hours before U.S. Presidential candidate John Kerry was due to make his acceptance speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, an event at which a candidate usually receives a significant boost in the polls.

Hayyat made the announcement after midnight local time, despite having apparently known Ghailiani's identity for some days beforehand.

In 2004, he was captured and detained by Pakistani forces in a joint operation with the United States, and was held until June 9, 2009, at Guantanamo Bay detention camp; one of 14 Guantanamo detainees who had previously been held at secret locations abroad.

According to The Washington Post, Ghailani told military officers he is contrite and claimed to be an exploited victim of al-Qaeda operatives.

Ghailani was transported from Guantanamo Bay to New York City to await trial in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in June 2009.

When the case came to trial, the judge disallowed the testimony of a key witness.

On November 17, 2010, a jury found him guilty of one count of conspiracy, but acquitted him of 284 other charges including all murder counts.

Critics of the Obama administration said the verdict proves civilian courts cannot be trusted to prosecute terrorists since it shows a jury might acquit a defendant entirely.

Supporters of the trial have said that the conviction and the stiff sentencing prove that the federal justice system works.

On January 25, 2011, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, the presiding judge in the case, sentenced Ghailani, believed to be 36 years old at the time, to life in prison for the bombing, stating that any suffering Ghailani experienced at the hands of the CIA or other agencies while in custody at Guantanamo Bay pales in comparison to the monumental tragedy of the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, which killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and left thousands injured or otherwise impacted by the crimes.

The attacks were one of the deadliest non-wartime incidents of international terrorism to affect the United States; they were on a scale not surpassed until the September 11 attacks three years later.

Ghailani, who had said he was never involved and did not intend to kill anyone, had been portrayed as cooperating with investigators—yielding information wanted by investigators—and as remorseful by his defense counsel, but that argument of relative non-involvement or remorse was not accepted.

He is the fifth person to be sentenced.