The U.S. government has decided not to seek the death penalty against a Guantanamo detainee charged in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
A letter released publicly on Monday from the government advised federal Judge Lewis Kaplan that Attorney General Eric Holder had told prosecutors not to seek the death penalty in the New York trial of Ahmed Ghailani. His trial is scheduled for September 2010.
Authorities allege he was a bomb-maker, document forger and aide to Osama bin Laden. The attacks at embassies in Tanzania and Kenya killed 124 people, including 12 Americans.
Ghailani was brought to the United States in June. The Tanzanian, captured in Pakistan in 2004, was held in Guantanamo since 2006.