The first Guantanamo Bay detainee’s court case finished yesterday with the defendant — Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani — being found guilty of conspiracy to destroy property, and cleared of 224 murders and 60 other sundry charges well. The charges were related to the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. His minimum sentence for the conspiracy charge is 20 years, though the sentence could easily run all the way up to life in prison.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the case, complimented the jury on their findings. “You deserve a lot of credit,” he said, “You have demonstrated also that American justice can be delivered calmly, deliberately and fairly, by ordinary people — people who are not beholden to any government, including this one.”
A spokesman for the Department of Justice emailed the following statement: “We respect the jury’s verdict and are pleased that Ahmed Ghailani now faces a minimum of 20 years in prison and a potential life sentence for his role in the embassy bombings.”
The defendant claimed to have been tricked into helping collect materials used in the bombings. A key witness for the prosecution was ruled inadmissible by the judge due to the fact that the prosecution only learned of him by torturing Ghailani. A huge pile of evidence pointed to Ghailani’s close proximity to the bomb-making materials, and several witnesses testified that he purchased parts used in making the bombs — but try as they might, without their star witness, prosecutors couldn’t tie Ghailani to the bombing beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Ghailani was convicted of violating 18 USC 844(f)(3) and 18 USC 844(n):
18 USC 844(f)(3): Whoever engages in conduct prohibited by this subsection, and as a result of such conduct directly or proximately causes the death of any person, including any public safety officer performing duties, shall be subject to the death penalty, or imprisoned for not less than 20 years or for life, fined under this title, or both.
18 USC 844(n): Except as otherwise provided in this section, a person who conspires to commit any offense defined in this chapter shall be subject to the same penalties (other than the penalty of death) as the penalties prescribed for the offense the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.
Effectively, the penalty for conspiracy is identical to the penalty for actually performing the bombing, except that the death penalty isn’t on the table. The remaining question then: How could Ghailani be guilty of conspiring to destroy the buildings without also being guilty of conspiring to kill the 224 people who died in the bombings? “The situation smacks of a compromise verdict,” said Robert Chesney of LawFareBlog.com, “Unless of course one thinks the jury concluded that Ghailani knew that the plan was to bomb the embassy, yet thought the scale would be small and somehow not lethal.”
As might be expected, many interpret the verdict as a horrible failure on America’s part to properly punish the terrorists that killed hundreds of people, dozens of them American citizens. That Ghailani got a civilian trial at all deeply offends many people, regardless of the verdict.
On the other hand, many people are seeing this as a huge victory for the United States’ human rights record, as Ghailani was originally going to be tried in a military court, where the verdict would almost certainly have been very different. Instead, in the shadow of 9/11, and with procedural hiccups like the denial of a key witness, the American civil justice system has laid out a clear message. Suspected terrorists will be treated fairly, given the rights they deserve, and punishment will be meted out with an even hand. Justice truly and rightly is blind.
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