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 attacks on 11 September 2001, 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.

His month long trial in Manhattan federal court has been seen as a test of US 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 September 11 attacks.

President 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 September 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.

Ghailani was not a trained operative, Quijano said, 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.

Unwitting Participant

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. He asked the jury to consider why the government hadn't called a single eyewitness 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?"

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Farbiarz said the idea Ghailani was an unwitting participant was "illogical," and that had he been innocent, he would have contacted authorities after the bombing.

Al Qaeda "let a dupe walk into the heart of it, a dupe that can get cold feet... a dupe that could tell the police? No way, it doesn't make sense. It's illogical," Farbiarz said.

"The thing about killing on this scale [...] it's planned, it's precise and it's terribly sophisticated," Farbiarz added, "and there is no room for a dupe in the heart of this."

Jurors were expected to begin deliberations on Wednesday.

The case that has gotten considerable attention as a bellwether for the Obama administration's fight against terrorism.

Ghailani was held in CIA custody after his July 2004 arrest in Pakistan and then moved to Guantanamo Bay in late 2006.

His defense attorneys have said he was tortured and prosecutors have acknowledged any statements made by Ghailani while in CIA custody were likely "coerced" and said at the outset they would not use them in the trial.

Citing Ghailani's trial as a validation of US civilian courts, the group Human Rights Watch on Tuesday launched a campaign and petition to have Mohammed and his co-conspirators tried in the same federal district.

In 2009, Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder said they wanted the trial of the accused September 11 mastermind and his followers in Manhattan, but a firestorm of local and national opposition has led to a stalemate on the issue.

"The attacks affected everyone in New York," said Andrea Prasow of Human Rights Watch. "Everyone should be allowed to step into the courtroom, you can't do that at Guantanamo."
 

 

(Source: Reuters)