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		</div><p><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/us-jury-convicts-guantanamo-man.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full" title="A federal jury convicted Ahmed Ghailani of one count of conspiracy (AP)" src="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/min-us-jury-convicts-guantanamo-man.jpg" alt="A federal jury convicted Ahmed Ghailani of one count of conspiracy (AP)"/></a></p>
<p>The first Guantanamo detainee to face a civilian trial has been acquitted of most charges that he helped unleash death and destruction on two US embassies in Africa in 1998 &#8211; an opening salvo in al Qaida&#8217;s campaign to kill Americans.</p>
<p>A federal jury convicted Ahmed Ghailani of one count of conspiracy but acquitted him of all other counts, including murder and murder conspiracy, in the embassy bombings.</p>
<p>The anonymous federal jury in New York deliberated for seven days, with a juror writing a note to the judge saying she felt threatened by other jurors.</p>
<p>Prosecutors had branded Ghailani a cold-blooded terrorist. The defence portrayed him as a clueless errand boy, exploited by senior al Qaida operatives and framed by evidence from contaminated crime scenes.</p>
<p>The trial in a lower Manhattan courthouse had been viewed as a possible test case for the Obama administration&#8217;s aim of putting other terror detainees &#8211; including self-professed September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba &#8211; on trial on US soil.</p>
<p>Ghailani&#8217;s prosecution also demonstrated some of the constitutional challenges the government would face if that happens. On the eve of his trial last month, the judge barred the government from calling a key witness because the witness had been identified while Ghailani was being held at a secret CIA camp where harsh interrogation techniques were used.</p>
<p>After briefly considering an appeal of that ruling, prosecutors forged ahead with a case honed a decade ago in the prosecution of four other men charged in the same attacks in Tanzania and Kenya. All were convicted in the same court and sentenced to life terms.</p>
<p>Prosecutors had alleged that Ghailani helped an al Qaida cell to buy a truck and components for explosives used in a suicide bombing in his native Tanzania on August 7, 1998. The attack in Dar es Salaam and a nearly simultaneous bombing in Nairobi, Kenya, killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. The day before the bombings, Ghailani boarded a one-way flight to Pakistan under an alias, prosecutors said. While on the run, he spent time in Afghanistan as a cook and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden and later as a document forger for al Qaida, authorities said.</p>
<p>Despite losing its key witness, the government was given broad latitude to reference al Qaida and bin Laden. It did &#8211; again and again. &#8220;This is Ahmed Ghailani. This is al Qaida. This is a terrorist. This is a killer,&#8221; Assistant US Attorney Harry Chernoff said in closing arguments.</p>
<p>The defence never contested that Ghailani knew some of the plotters. But it claimed he was in the dark about their sinister intentions. &#8220;Call him a fall guy. Call him a pawn,&#8221; lawyer Peter Quijano said in his closing argument. &#8220;But don&#8217;t call him guilty.&#8221;</p>
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