Gitmo Bombing Suspect to Be Tried in New York
Embassy bombing suspect would be first Gitmo detainee tried in criminal court.
WASHINGTON, May 20, 2009 -- An al Qaeda suspect who is being held at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be brought to New York to face charges in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, Obama administration sources told ABC News.
Ahmed Ghailani, along with other alleged al Qaeda conspirators, is facing charges in New York City in a 238-count federal indictment the embassy bombings that occurred in 1998.
Ghailani, believed to be the main facilitator in the Tanzania bombing which killed 11 Americans, would be the first Gitmo detainee to be brought to trial in U.S. civil criminal courts.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, refused to discuss other details about the administration's rollout plans.
The disclosure of the plan to bring the Guantanamo detainee comes just hours after the Senate voted to deny the Obama administration pull funding to shut down the detention facilty.
Also today, an al Qaeda suspect who met Osama bin Laden at one of the terrorist organization's key training camps before the 9/11 attacks pleaded guilty in a federal court in Minneapolis.
Mohammed Abdullah Warsame's case has been highly complex, taking more than 5 years for his guilty plea to come to fruition.
Warsame pleaded guilty to attending an al Qaeda training camp outside of Kabul, Afghanistan, and also admitted that he attended the infamous Al Faruq training camp where several of the 9/11 hijackers trained and bin Laden visited.
According to the plea, Warsame met Bin Laden at the al Faruq training camp in the summer of 2000.
After receiving training at the camps, Warsame is believed to have fought against the Northern Alliance, a group of Afghan warlords who joined the U.S.-led coalition fight against the Taliban.
Warsame, a naturalized Canadian citizen of Somali descent, traveled back from the training camps to Canada in March 2001 before relocating and settling down in Minneapolis.
According to the plea deal in 2002 and 2003, before he was arrested Warsame exchanged e-mails with several known al Qaeda members and also sent money to a former training camp commander.
Warsame's case was very sensitive when he was first arrested. ABC News' Pierre Thomas reported when his case first came to light in 2004 that some in the FBI and intelligence agencies wanted to try to turn him into a double agent to penetrate al Qaeda.
During their investigation of Warsame, FBI agents looked for links to Zacarias Moussaoui and Fazul Mohammed, the main suspect in the 1998 embassy bombings, but shortly after he was arrested by the FBI word of his arrest leaked in the local Minnesota papers even though he was being held as a material witness.
Assistant Attorney for the National Security Division General David Kris praised the people who worked on the case.
"The many agents, analysts and prosecutors who helped bring about today's guilty plea -- after years of investigation and extensive pre-trial litigation -- deserve special thanks for their efforts," he said in a statement issued today. "This case serves as a reminder of the continuing threats we face as a nation and our resolve to meet those threats."