The ongoing pretrial proceedings in case against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the former Osama bin Laden bodyguard who also allegedly participated in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, is widely viewed as a test case for the future federal prosecutions of other so-called “enemy combatants.”
Ghailani, who was captured in Pakistan in 2004, remains the first and only Guantánamo Bay detainee to be transferred to an Article III court. He is accused of, among other things, purchasing the explosives used in the August 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. The 286-count indictment against him includes more than 200 counts of murder.
