Ghailani sentenced to life in embassy attacks

Convicted embassy bombing accomplice Ahmed Ghailani was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan for his role in the 1998 al-Qaida attack on U.S. missions in Kenya and Tanzania that cost 224 lives.

"The offense was horrific," U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said after ordering Ghailani to stand near the end of a two-hour hearing. ". . . A sentence must be imposed that makes it crystal clear that others who engage or contemplate engaging in serious acts of terrorism risk enormously serious consequences."

Ghailani, 36, was held for five years in CIA and military custody, and his case was the first effort to try an ex-detainee in civilian court. The tough sentence salvaged a talking point for that approach, but Ghailani's acquittal last year on all but one count has left future trials in limbo.

The defendant, dressed in a blue-checked dress shirt with button-down collar, dropped his head when the sentence was imposed, and his lawyers hugged, massaged and consoled him when the hearing was over.

Ghailani did not make a statement, but 11 victims of the bombings or their relatives spoke at length before the sentence was announced, describing the consequences of the bombings to Kaplan.

"I believe one year in jail for each dead is a fair sentence," said James Ndeda, a Kenyan man who was rendered impotent. "I know he may not live to that 224 years, but the practice is in Africa if someone dies in jail, his grave is chained until the period elapses."

"We are never pain-free," said Yasemin Pressley, an American whose husband's jaw was grotesquely disfigured in the Kenyan attack. " . . . if we are going to be with pain all our lives, so also should he."

Ghailani fled to Pakistan after the 1998 bombings and became an al-Qaida forger and aide to Osama bin Laden until his 2004 capture. He was convicted last year of conspiring to destroy U.S. property in the bombings.

He had sought leniency because the jury acquitted him on 284 other counts, including all murder charges - apparently accepting his defense that he was a dupe of associates who did not tell him about the plan to target embassies.

But Kaplan indicated that he simply didn't agree with the jury on whether Ghailani was a murderer and dismissed its finding - a view echoed by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who labeled Ghailani a "mass murderer" in a statement praising the sentence.

Defense lawyers also had argued that Ghailani, a Tanzanian, deserved a break because he underwent abusive questioning by the CIA after his capture in 2004, and provided valuable intelligence that helped "save lives."

But Kaplan said the magnitude of the crime "dwarfed" any mistreatment or information. "For every hour of pain and discomfort that he suffered, he caused a thousandfold more pain and suffering to entirely innocent people," the judge said.

One victim - Susan Hirsch, whose husband died in Kenya - used her statement to criticize the government's tactics, complaining that the treatment of Ghailani delayed justice and nearly undermined the trial.

Peter Quijano, Ghailani's lawyer, said he plans to appeal, focusing on Kaplan's pretrial ruling that the five-year confinement of Ghailani without bringing him to court did not violate his constitutional right to a speedy trial.