At Terror Trial, Big Questions Were Avoided

[alp227]

Source: The New York Times

One of the striking aspects of the case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first former Guantánamo detainee tried in a civilian court, was how little the federal jury in New York City heard about the issues that had made his case so fiercely debated.

The jurors heard nothing about the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where Mr. Ghailani had been held, nor about the secret overseas “black site” run by the Central Intelligence Agency, where, his lawyers say, he had been tortured.

The jury also was not told about statements Mr. Ghailani had made to interrogators before he was brought into the civilian court system, statements that prosecutors say “amount to a confession” of his role in the 1998 bombings of two American Embassies in East Africa, killing 224 people.

Indeed, the four-week trial of Mr. Ghailani realized none of the fears of critics who had claimed that the civilian system would allow terrorism suspects to turn such cases into soapboxes, or that such cases might even be dismissed by judges who were presented with evidence of harsh government interrogation techniques.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/nyregion/19ghailani.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

[DallasNE]

1. The Headline Answers The Fear Of Critics

The one mistake I see being made by the government in this case is the overkill of charging Ghailani on over 280 counts. Had they only tried him on a dozen or so counts then they could have tailored the prosecution to those specific counts and perhaps gained more than one guilty conviction and a more severe sentence.

Lastly, since the attacks happened in Africa, with nearly all of those killed African, why aren't African courts involved in prosecuting Ghailani?