Ghailani, Ahmed Khalfan (1974–)

Born in Zanzibar, Tanzania, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was alleged to be a member of the al Qaeda network and was believed to have been directly involved in the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In particular, he was accused of procuring the materials for and assembling the truck bomb that devastated the embassy in Dar es Salaam. In November 2010, a jury found Ghailani guilty of conspiracy but cleared him of the murder charge; he was sentenced to life in prison.

During the late 1990s, Ghailani was allegedly a member of the Tanzanian cell of al Qaeda, which serves as an umbrella group for other militant organizations and establishes cells in areas where attacks are carried out. Ghailani allegedly worked closely with al Qaeda operatives from the Kenyan and Tanzanian cells.

In the 1998 U.S. indictment, Ghailani and a fellow al Qaeda operative, Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, were charged with buying the Nissan Atlas refrigeration truck used to bomb the Dar es Salaam embassy. A few months before the attack, prosecutors argued, Ghailani also purchased the oxygen and acetylene tanks used in the bomb's construction, and then helped load all of the bomb equipment (tanks, boxes of TNT, detonators, fertilizer, and sandbags) onto the truck.

The very next day, in synchronized attacks 400 miles apart, truck bombs exploded at the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, one bomb detonating just minutes before the other. Three suspects in the case pled guilty and cooperated with the U.S. government as witnesses. In October 2001, four men linked to bin Laden were convicted of conspiring in the bombings. All the defendants, who had pleaded not guilty, were sentenced to life in prison without parole.

In this June 9, 2009, file courtroom sketch, Guantánamo detainee Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, left, listens as his civilian lawyer Scott Fenstermaker, right, speaks at his arraignment in U.S. Federal Court in New York. Assistant U.S. Attorney David Raskin, seated in front, and Ghailani's military lawyer Marine Col. Jeffrey Colwell, back center, are shown listening. Ghailani, the first Guantánamo detainee to face a civilian trial, was acquitted in New York City on November 17, 2010, of all but one of the hundreds of charges that he helped unleash death and destruction on two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.

(AP Photo/Elizabeth Williams, File. © 2011 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved)

[Page 231]On July 25, 2004, Ghailani was captured by Pakistani forces following a gun battle in the city of Gujrat. Pakistan turned Ghailani over to U.S. custody, and he was held in secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency until 2006, when he was transferred to the U.S. detention facility in Guántanamo Bay, Cuba.

In 2009 Ghailani was moved to New York City to face federal trial as part of a drive to close the Guántanamo facility. He faced 286 charges, including murder and attempted murder, bombing, and conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. Ghailani, who pled not guilty, told a Guántanamo military tribunal in 2007 that he had not bought the truck, and that he thought that the boxes he transported held soap for washing horses.

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