WASHINGTON — The first Guantanamo detainee chosen for trial in New York City is a man officials say began his terrorist career on a bicycle, delivering bomb parts, and rose through al Qaeda’s ranks to become a bodyguard to Osama bin Laden.
PATH TO RADICAL ISLAM BEGAN IN JAILS
‘TERROR’ THUGS’ SICK BLOODLUST
INFORMANT FINGERED $$ LAUNDER DUO
‘EXPLOSIVE’ EVIDENCE DOOMS THESE GOONS
Ahmed Ghailani was in his 20s when prosecutors say he helped terrorists build one of the bombs that destroyed US embassies in East Africa in 1998.
Now the alleged international terrorist will be brought to trial in the city in a major legal test of President Obama’s plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center by early 2010.
Officials yesterday announced the plan to bring Ghailani to New York for trial, which would make him the first Guantanamo detainee to be brought to the United States and the first to be brought to trial in a civilian criminal court.
US authorities say Ghailani, a Tanzanian, helped deliver the explosives in the embassy attack in Nairobi, Kenya, often with a bicycle. He left Africa just before the bombings and later rose through al Qaeda ranks, investigators say.
He has denied knowing the TNT and oxygen tanks he delivered would be used for a bomb.
After the Aug. 7, 1998, bombings at the embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed more than 200, he worked for al Qaeda as a document forger, trainer at a terror camp and bodyguard to bin Laden, military prosecutors say.
MOSQUE’S IMAM IS A PRISON CHAPLAIN
MALKIN: PREZ FINDS NYC PLOT ‘UNSPEAKABLE’
PHOTOS: BRONX TERROR PLOT THWARTED
He was categorized as a high-value detainee by US authorities after he was captured in Pakistan in 2004 and transferred to Guantanamo two years later.
Obama spoke of the Ghailani decision yesterday in a speech.
“After over a decade, it is time to finally see that justice is served,” Obama said.