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The feds’ case against an accused al Qaeda bomber almost blew up in their face yesterday as the jury admitted it’s deadlocked — with a single holdout.
Deliberations came to a dramatic halt in the case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani — who is accused of taking part in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania — when juror No. 12 said she was being “attacked” by the others for her opinion, and asked to be replaced.
“Your honor . . . at this point [I] am secure and I have come to my conclusion,” said the note to Manhattan federal Judge Lewis Kaplan from juror No. 12.
“My conclusion is not going to change. I feel [I] am being attacked for my conclusion. Therefore, I am asking you if I can be exchanged for an alternate juror,” she wrote.
Sources said the juror thought Ghailani was not guilty — while the other 11 disagreed with her.
Lawyers defending the former Guantanamo Bay detainee asked for a mistrial, claiming the juror’s note suggested the jury was “hopelessly deadlocked” after just three days behind closed doors.
Kaplan denied both the juror and the Ghailani requests, and sent the jury back to deliberate.
“To expect unanimity in that short period of time is unrealistic,” Kaplan said.
“You have deliberated only three days in a case that took approximately four weeks to try,” Kaplan told the jury.
“It is normal for jurors to have differences.”
He added, “Do not change your mind just because other jurors see things differently, or just to get the case over with.
“But if you cannot agree, it is your right to fail to agree. What I have just said is not meant to rush or pressure you into agreeing on a verdict.”
The case went to the jurors last Wednesday, and they deliberated on Thursday and yesterday.
Ghailani, 36, is facing charges of conspiracy and murder for the terror bombings, which killed 224 people, including a dozen Americans, and injured thousands of others.
He is the first detainee from the military prison in Guantanamo Bay to be tried in civilian court.
He is accused of scouting the American Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, assembling bomb materials and escorting a suicide bomber in advance of the attacks in Nairobi, Kenya.
He later fled to Afghanistan, where he allegedly served as a bodyguard and a cook for Osama bin Laden and helped forge documents for al Qaeda.
Ghailani was captured in Pakistan in 2004, after a 10-hour gunfight with Pakistani forces, and transferred to Gitmo in 2006.
He was transferred to a federal prison in New York in 2009.