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Guantanamo suspect duped by al Qaeda - defense

by Reuters
Tuesday, 9 November 2010 19:00 GMT

* Accused in African embassy bombings that killed 224

* Seen as test for civilian trials of Guantanamo suspects

* Defense: In pre-9/11 world, Ghailani easily tricked

By Basil Katz

NEW YORK, Nov 9 (Reuters) - The first suspect transferred from the Guantanamo military prison to face U.S. civilian trial was a naive boy tricked by al Qaeda three years before the Sept. 11 attacks, his defense attorney told a New York court on Tuesday.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, 36, a Tanzanian from Zanzibar, is accused of conspiring in the 1998 al Qaeda car bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. [ID:nN09289525]

His monthlong trial in Manhattan federal court, which heard closing arguments on Tuesday, has been seen as a test of U.S. President Barack Obama's approach to prosecuting some of the 174 men held at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. military prison in Cuba, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Obama has vowed to close the prison at Guantanamo amid international condemnation of the treatment of detainees. But he has run into political resistance at home, including in New York where officials at one point indicated Mohammed and four co-conspirators would be tried.

In his closing argument, defense attorney Peter Quijano asked the 12-member jury to imagine a world before the Sept. 11 attacks, when his client would not have known about al Qaeda.

"This is before 9/11 ... it was a different time. How many people knew or had heard of al Qaeda?" Quijano said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Harry Chernoff on Monday delivered the government's closing arguments and said the embassy attacks were al Qaeda's "most spectacular attacks on America to that point" and that Ghailani was a knowing conspirator.

Ghailani was not a trained operative, Quijano countered on Tuesday, and was "duped unknowingly" into helping further the attacks. "That's how al Qaeda works," Quijano added.

The government accuses Ghailani of buying seven gas cylinders used in the bomb, as well as the truck used to transport it. Prosecutors said Ghailani flew to Pakistan along with senior al Qaeda operatives on the day before the bombings, and that a blasting cap was found in a cupboard in his room.

But Quijano denied Ghailani ever took the flight to Karachi, and asked the jury to consider why the government hadn't called a single eye witness placing him on the plane.

Quijano also said that buying oxygen and acetylene tanks and a truck was nothing unusual for Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

"Why would Ahmed think this was unusual, let alone strange, let alone criminal, let alone part of an al Qaeda plot to blow up two embassies?"

The government was due to offer a rebuttal later on Tuesday and jurors were expected to begin deliberations on Wednesday. (Reporting by Basil Katz; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Cynthia Osterman)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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