UNITED States authorities have announced that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian national accused of involvement in the 1998 US embassy bombing in Dar es Salaam arrived early yesterday morning in New York to face criminal charges. Ghailani had been held at the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba since September 2006. After a thorough review of his case, the Tanzanian was recently referred for criminal prosecution in the Southern District of New York pursuant to a March 12, 2001 indictment against him. Ghailani was transferred from the custody of the US Department of Defence to the Southern District of New York by America’s Marshals Service. He is currently in custody at the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in New York, which has housed numerous terror suspects over the years during their prosecutions in the city’s Southern District. The Tanzanian was later yesterday expected to make his initial appearance in Manhattan federal court. Ghailani faces 286 separate counts in the indictment. Among other violations, the superseding indictment charges him with conspiring with Osama bin Laden and other members of al-Qaeda to kill Americans anywhere in the world, as well as separate charges of murder for the deaths of each of the 224 people killed in the simultaneous US embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya and various other offences related to the bombings. ’’With his appearance in federal court today, Ahmed Ghailani is being held accountable for his alleged role in the bombing of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and the murder of 224 people,’’ said US Attorney General Eric Holder. ’’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.’’ Ghaliani has already admitted having once met bin Laden, but apologized for his role in the bomb explosion. He insisted that he had been kept in the dark about the purpose of the attack on the US embassy in Tanzania. ’’It was without my knowledge what they were doing, although I helped them,’’ said Ghailani, according to official court transcripts. He added: ’’I’m sorry for what happened to those families who lost...who lost their friends and their beloved ones.’’ Ghailani also said he once met Osama bin Laden. More than a decade ago, a federal grand jury in New York indicted Ghailani on charges that he helped plan the bombing of the US embassy in Dar es Salaam on August 7, 1998. At the time, he was still a fugitive. He was finally captured in Pakistan in 2004, held in secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and transferred in 2006 to the naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Last year, US military prosecutors filed war crimes charges against him in connection with the embassy bombing episode. Ghailani thus became a rare detainee facing similar charges in both military and civilian courts, for the same act. The baby-faced and diminutive Tanzanian -- known as ’’Fupi’’ -- faced a bounty of $25m when he was nabbed after a 12-hour shoot-out at an Al Qaeda safe house in Pakistan. Ghailani rose from an Al Qaeda ’’rank-and-file soldier’’ in Afghanistan before the September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks in the US to become Bin Laden’s cook and his most prolific passport forger and travel agent, according to official records. He was among the original 22 ’’most wanted’’ terrorists designated by ex-President George W. Bush’s Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) after 9/11, even though the US government admits he ’’was not directly involved in operational planning’’ by Al Qaeda. US President Barack Obama has come under sharp criticism from Congress for allowing Ghailani to be transferred to America to face criminal charges.
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