Gitmo suspect pleads not guilty in federal court

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The first terror suspect to be brought from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States for trial appeared Tuesday in federal court in New York where he pleaded not guilty to 286 murder and conspiracy charges in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian held at Guantanamo since 2006, had been flown to New York under U.S. Marshal escort and detained at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

President Barack Obama has pledged to close the Guantanamo prison by January and relocate its 240 prisoners from the U.S. naval base in southern Cuba. This has sparked a U.S. political debate, with Republican leaders warning that Americans don’t want terrorism suspect at prisons near them and the Obama administration maintaining that federal facilities are secure.

Ghailani was a strategic choice for the Obama administration to demonstrate that the federal courts — as opposed to the Guantanamo military tribunals — can be relied on to bring to justice those suspected of heinous acts against the United States.

He is not known to have been subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” before his indictment. Those practices, including the simulated drowning technique of waterboarding, have been deemed torture by some judges, raising barriers to the admissibility of any confessions gained through the harsh treatment.

Ghailani confessed at a 2007 Guantanamo hearing to having helped with the 1998 Dar es Salaam embassy bombing, but claimed he wasn’t aware of the target or the full attack plan, which included the Nairobi embassy bombing.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Ghailani’s transfer and arraignment in federal court were moves that would finally hold him accountable for his purported role in the bombings.

U.S. prisons now hold 216 terror suspects or convicts, including Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahmann, serving a life sentence for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

If convicted, Ghailani could face life imprisonment or the death penalty, the Justice Department said in a statement.

Human-rights groups that have been sharply critical of U.S. detention policy at Guantanamo hailed the transfer of Ghailani.

But conservative lawmakers opposed to closing Guantanamo lashed out at moving Ghailani into the U.S. justice system. “This is the first step in the Democrats’ plan to import terrorists into America,” House Republican leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement.