Enlarge imageBy Tabassum Zakaria
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government will bring an al Qaeda suspect accused in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa from Guantanamo Bay to trial in New York, in the first prosecution of a detainee in a civilian U.S. court, a U.S. official said on Wednesday.
The U.S. government was expected to announce on Thursday that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, accused of supplying equipment and support for the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania, would be brought to trial in federal court in New York, the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. government is working to determine what to do with the 240 detainees held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, established after the September 11, 2001 attacks, in order to meet President Barack Obama's deadline to close the facility by the end of January.
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Ghailani will be prosecuted on charges that he played a role in the deaths of more than 200 people in the nearly simultaneous bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in August 1998, the U.S. official said.
Eleven people were killed and at least 85 were wounded in the Tanzania bombing, and 213 people were killed in Kenya.
A Tanzanian, Ghailani was seized in Pakistan and was one of the 14 "high-value detainees" transferred to Guantanamo from secret CIA prisons in September 2006.
At a 2007 hearing at Guantanamo Bay to determine that he was an "enemy combatant," Ghailani confessed and apologized for supplying equipment used in the Tanzania bombing but said he did not know the supplies would be used to attack the embassy, according to military transcripts.
He told the Guantanamo review panel he bought the TNT used in the bombing, purchased a cell phone used by another person involved in the attack and was present when a third person bought a truck used in the attack, the transcript said.
(Editing by Todd Eastham)
