The Ahmed Ghailani Verdict

The Ghailani indictment is one more that originated in the Southern District of New York (SDNY). If you have read some of my past posts here, you're familiar with my opinion of the federal prosecutors in the SDNY. Ahmed Ghailani was indicted in December of 1998 on a total of 308 counts and with a list of co-defendants that includes Usama bin Laden. To summarize the charges, Ghailani was accused of being a participant in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa. He was apprehended in 2004 in Pakistan.

I do not pretend to know the real facts in the case and to be honest, I have not read the 149 page indictment, but this isn't really about the details of the case anyway; it is about the extreme overkill and sensationalism exhibited by prosecutors in this case and most all other War on Terror cases and the use of torture to obtain a false confession. It is also about the future of War on Terror prosecutions. The indictment can be read HERE.

News articles state that Ghailani was charged with 285 counts, and not 308, so I must believe that 1) 23 counts were dismissed prior to trial; or 2) Ghailani was not charged with all of the counts that his co-defendants were charged with.

The New York jury acquitted Ahmed Ghailani on all counts except for one: Conspiracy to destroy U.S. property.

While this sounds like a victory of sorts, he will end-up receiving the lengthiest possible sentence on the one count and is unlikely to ever be released from U.S. custody anyway. What is significant in the case is that the jurors were instructed to throw out any evidence that the court deemed inadmissible because it was obtained through illegal torture. Is there legal torture? Hell, I am just using the court's wording.

The victory in this case is that a New York court, and obviously the presiding judge, has stated clearly that evidence obtained through torture is not evidence at all. False confessions will not be accepted!

I'm not even going to name the judge as the angry, torture-happy warmongers out there will need to find it on their own.

What U.S. military interrogators and U.S. prosecutors must have done to this man is unimaginable to me. We must appreciate the jury for acquitting Ghailani on all but the one count. I am only sorry that they couldn't acquit him on that one count also to send a clear message to U.S. prosecutors and the U.S. military forces that torture will not get them what they want and it is 100% unacceptable in a so-called free country. I only wish they had considered how important that message would have been to the entire world – forget the blood-thirsty warmongers I seem to encounter all too frequently. Just forget them because they do not deserve a minute of my valuable time.


Now for the real problem with the verdict:

The usual hard-liners will fight tooth and nail to make sure that there will never be another War on Terror trial in U.S. courts again. Every future case will be tried by a military commission. As with the Omar Khadr case and so many others torture will be absolutely acceptable to the warmongers in a military commission trial. And I have little doubt that the Obama administration and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will help the military keep the cases in its kangaroo courtrooms.

I feel good that a New York federal judge and a jury have decided that torture is not acceptable. The rest of it is another story…


Image: Old globe and Iraq 2007 © Marty Heitner / 2010 © iStockPhoto.com