Key witness barred
The government has already faced one major setback in Ghailani’s trial. Last week, Lewis Kaplan, the US district court judge, ruled that Hussein Abebe, a man who the government alleges sold explosives to Ghailani, could not testify at Ghailani’s trial because the United States had coerced Ghailani into identifying him.
Ghailani was arrested by Pakistani forces in late July 2004 and later handed over to the US Central Intelligence Agency, which transferred him – like many other terrorism suspects after September 11 – to a secret “black site,” where he was interrogated.
Critics have said the CIA’s interrogation programme, which included infamous techniques like waterboarding, amounted to torture. Kaplan wrote in a court ruling that “extremely harsh” methods were employed on Ghailani by the CIA to get him to turn over information, and that the government, in order to avoid litigating the specific details, has asked him to assume everything Ghailani said in CIA custody was coerced.
Abebe, who prosecutors say is a “giant” witness would have testified to selling Ghailani five crates of dynamite in the town of Arusha, was arrested by Tanzanian authorities in August 2006 after Ghailani – without access to a lawyer – helped the CIA identify and locate him.
Oxygen tanks
Though the US government lacks Abebe’s testimony, Lewin said that prosecutors will still present witnesses who can testify that Ghailani bought oxygen and acetylene tanks as well as the white Nissan Atlas truck used in the Dar es Salaam attack.
Lewin said that Tanzanian shopkeepers, including a welder who sold the gas tanks to Ghailani, would testify. He provided details of the tanks, saying each of the 20 used in Dar es Salaam was five feet tall and weighed 150 pounds.
He also said a former roommate of Ghailani’s and L’Houssaine Kherchtou, a former Moroccan al-Qaeda operative, would testify for the government.
Even if Ghailani is not convicted in Manhattan, he still faces charges before a military commission, and his status as an “enemy combatant,” Kaplan wrote, means that he could still be held as something like a prisoner of war until “hostilities” between the United States and al-Qaeda and the Taliban come to an end.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
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