Africa embassy bombing suspect’s civilian trial begins in New York

The first trial of a Guantanamo Bay detainee to face justice in a civilian court began with a dramatic flourish Tuesday as a former ambassador described a low rumble, a thunderous blast and a burning man “in his last gasps of life” after the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania in 1998.

“Every clock in the embassy stopped,” John E. Lange, who had been the acting ambassador in Tanzania, said as he began what is expected to be months of testimony in the trial of accused Al Qaeda operative Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani.

Ghailani faces 286 separate counts, including murder and conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, stemming from blasts that tore through the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, on Aug. 7, 1998. The explosions killed 224 people.

Ghailani, 36, was arrested in Pakistan six years after the blasts and spent several years at the U.S.-run prison in Cuba before being transferred to federal court in New York in 2009. The trial is being viewed as a test of whether the Obama administration’s plan to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and move its prisoners into civilian courts is viable, given security and other concerns.

Prosecutors already have suffered one setback as a result of the military’s treatment of detainees at Guantanamo: The judge last week banned testimony from a key witness because his information was obtained while Ghailani faced coerced interrogation methods.

In opening statements, though, prosecutors made it clear that they hoped to overcome that with a case heavy on physical evidence and emotional testimony.

Nicholas Lewin, an assistant U.S. attorney, said jurors would see chunks of charred metal from the Nissan truck used to blow up the Tanzania embassy, with a vehicle identification number that helped investigators trace it to Ghailani; shrapnel from some of the 20 150-pound cylinders used to build the bomb; plane tickets showing Ghailani’s flight to Pakistan along with other Al Qaeda cell members; and recollections from blast survivors as well as people who associated with Ghailani in the days before the attack.

“The defendant did all of this because he and his accomplices were devoted to Al Qaeda’s overriding goal: killing Americans,” Lewin said as he stood behind Ghailani.

Defense attorney Steve Zissou said his baby-faced client was a naive young man who enjoyed watching cartoons and playing with children, and who fell in with older men who he thought were his friends.

“These friends … at some point in their lives trained and became part of Al Qaeda,” Zissou said in his opening statement as Ghailani sat quietly, clad in a gray V-neck sweater and trousers that evoked a schoolboy’s uniform. “These are the men who used him.”

According to Zissou, the men needed Ghailani to obtain trucks and other materials used in the attacks but Ghailani knew nothing of their plot. “He was with them, but he wasn’t one of them,” Zissou said.

Lange was the first of what is likely to be scores of witnesses. He described the morning of the explosion, when he was presiding over a regular weekly meeting in his third-floor office with several other people.

“I suddenly heard a very low rumbling noise,” Lange said. As the truck exploded outside, the windows blew in, computers flew off their desks, and concrete chunks toppled onto people, said Lange, who made his way downstairs to try to find out what had happened and to alert officials in Washington.

As he exited the shattered building, Lange said, “I saw the body of a man, black and charred. He was in his last gasps of life, trying to breathe, just [lying] there.”

Ghailani, who has pleaded innocent to the charges, faces life in prison if convicted. Four other men convicted in the attacks in 2001, before the Sept. 11 attacks, received life sentences.

The trial comes months after the Obama administration’s plan to move another high-profile Guantanamo detainee — the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — to federal court in New York was dropped amid anger from critics. Some opponents of the move said it was too risky to hold such a trial in New York. Others, including many relatives of victims of the 2001 attacks, argued that terrorism suspects didn’t deserve to be tried by civilian courts.

tina.susman@latimes.com