As US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan prepared to sentence Ahmed Ghailani, he called it a day of justice for the defendant, as well as for the families of 224 people who died in the Al-Qaeda bombings, including a dozen Americans, and thousands more who were injured.
Kaplan denounced the attacks and said he was satisfied that Ghailani knew and intended that people would be killed as a result of his actions and the conspiracy he joined.
“This crime was so horrible,” he said. “It was a cold-blooded killing and maiming of innocent people on an enormous scale. It wrecked the lives of thousands more ... who had their lives changed forever. The purpose of the crime was to create terror by causing death and destruction on a scale that was hard to imagine in 1998 when it occurred.” Ghailani, 36, was convicted late last year of conspiring to destroy government buildings but acquitted of more than 200 counts of murder and dozens of other charges. He had asked for leniency, saying he never intended to kill anyone and he was tortured.
Ghailani, a Tanzanian, was captured in Pakistan in 2004 and later interrogated overseas at a secret CIA-run camp.
He was moved to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006 before being transferred to New York for prosecution in 2009.
The trial late last year at a lower Manhattan courthouse had been viewed as a test for President Barack Obama's aim of putting other terrorism detainees — including self-professed Sept. 11, 2001, mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — on trial on US soil.
Kaplan rejected requests Ghailani's pleas for leniency, saying whatever Ghailani suffered at the hands of the CIA and others “pales in comparison to the suffering and the horror he and his confederates caused.” Evidence at trial showed that Ghailani helped purchase bomb components prior to the attacks, including 15 gas tanks designed to enhance the power of the bombs, along with one of the bomb vehicles.
Ghailani's lawyers argued that he was duped by friends into participating in the attack and was upset afterwards when he saw the damage done.
A group of survivors of the attack and family members of those who died spoke at the sentencing, including Sue Bartley, a Washington-area resident who lost her husband, Julian Leotis Bartley Sr., then US consul general to Kenya, and her son, Julian “Jay” Bartley Jr.
Bartley said the attacks were still fresh in her mind and excruciatingly painful.
“What remains is a lingering, unsettling feeling that is compounded by grief, deep sadness and anger,” she said.
“The pain is with me every day. Often times it is unthinkable.”
