The prosecution rested yesterday, and the defense presented only a brief case through stipulations, in the trial of accused U.S. embassy bomber Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani. Wrapping up a three-week trial that was initially anticipated to take months, Lawyers for both sides are now preparing for a charging conference early Monday morning with Southern District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan. Following the conference, the government is set to begin a closing argument that is expected to last all day. The defense closing is set for Tuesday, followed by the government’s rebuttal, the judge’s charge to the jury and deliberations.
Mr. Ghailani, the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to be moved into a civilian court for trial, elected not to testify in his defense against charges he was part of the al-Qaida conspiracy to bomb embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. The trial was shortened considerably by the government’s decision to forego calling a number of witnesses, as well as by Judge Kaplan’s pretrial decision to bar the government from calling as a witness a Tanzanian who claimed to have sold Mr. Ghailani the dynamite used in the plot. – Mark Hamblett
High Court to Hear University Patent Dispute, ‘Miranda’ Case
