New York - Former Guantanamo detainee Ahmed Ghailani
received a court-appointed lawyer at a hearing in a US district court
in New York Tuesday.
He told Judge Lewis Kaplan he cannot afford a civilian attorney
and would also need a translator.
Ghailani is the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to appear in a US
federal court on criminal charges and has pleaded not guilty in
connection to the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania.
Ghailani had already been indicted in the killings of 224 people.
He now faces a total of 286 criminal counts, including conspiring
with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to kill Americans anywhere in the
world. If convicted, he could be sentenced to 20 years to life in
prison, or possible execution.
The Tanzanian-born suspect was taken to the court in lower
Manhattan, dressed in black overalls over his dark orange prison
garb, for a court session lasting about an hour.
Kaplan said he wanted to clarify some administrative matters
before he set a schedule for future court appearances and a trial,
the length of which will depend on whether the prosecution decides to
seek the death penalty. The judge set the next hearing for July 2.
Ghailani shook his head when Kaplan asked whether he could speak
English fluently. But he said through an attorney that he understood
what the judge said.
Kaplan appointed Attorney Greg Cooper to lead the defense team in
response to Ghailani's statement that he does not have the money to
pay for his own legal team. He also instructed Cooper to seek
information from the US Defense Department on the Ghailani case in
the two weeks before the next hearing.
Cooper protested, saying he would not have enough time to go
through 900 boxes of documents accumulated in Guantanamo, 90 per cent
of which require a government security clearance in order to read.
Cooper does not have that security clearance.
Present in the hushed court room were Colonel Jeffrey Colwell and
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Reiter, the military lawyers who defended
Ghailani in Guantanamo. Both have not received authorization from the
Pentagon to continue their work in a civilian court, but said they
would seek an authorization.
Ghailani first appeared before the federal court last week,
pleading not guilty to 286 counts related to the 1998 bombings of the
US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and denying he belonged to the
al-Qaeda network.
Ghailani was captured in Pakistan in 2004 and detained at a secret
location by the US Central Intelligence Agency before he was sent to
Guantanamo in September 2006.
USA
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