NEW YORK — The first Guantanamo Bay detainee to be prosecuted in a civilian court was cleared for trial Tuesday by a judge who said a two-year interrogation and five-year detention were not grounds for dismissal because they served compelling national-security interests.
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was interrogated by the CIA for important intelligence information, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in a decision that rejected defense requests to toss out the indictment on the grounds that Ghailani was denied a speedy trial.
“No one denies that the agency’s purpose was to protect the United States from attack,” Kaplan wrote, noting that the government was not proposing to use any evidence — with one possible exception — gained from Ghailani’s interrogation.
Ghailani is charged in the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. His trial is set for Sept. 27.
The decision came as U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said this week that the administration is working through issues to decide where a trial can be held for self-professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo.
The ruling was not surprising — federal judges regularly have sided with prosecutors in terrorism cases — but it could indicate that lengthy detentions and harsh interrogations do not stand in the way of the Obama administration’s plan to bring enemy combatants to civilian courts for trial.
The judge said civil claims or even criminal charges could be brought if Ghailani was subjected to illegal methods of questioning during interrogations that followed his July 2004 arrest. “But this is not the time or the place to pass judgment on whether those techniques, in and of themselves, were appropriate or legal. . . . Its objective was to gather intelligence, not evidence for use in this criminal case,” Kaplan said.
Ghailani was accused by the government of being a bombmaker, document forger and aide to Osama bin Laden. He has pleaded not guilty.
