It took less than 24 hours for Southern District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to reject Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani’s motion to set aside his single-count conviction for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings as inconsistent with his acquittal on 284 other counts.
During oral arguments Thursday, Judge Kaplan left the unmistakable impression that he would deny the motion. On Friday morning he did just that in a 54-page opinion in United States v. Ghailani, 98 Crim. 1023, saying, “if there is any injustice in the jury’s verdict, the victims were the United States and those killed, injured and otherwise devastated by these barbaric acts of terror, not Ghailani.”
