Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (Arabic: أحمد خلفان الغيلاني, Aḥmad Khalifān al-Ghaīlānī; born March 14, 1974) is a Tanzanian conspirator of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization convicted for his role in the bombing of embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

[10] On January 25, 2011, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, the presiding judge in the case, sentenced Ghailani, believed to be 36 years old at the time, to life in prison for the bombing,[1][2] stating that any suffering Ghailani experienced at the hands of the CIA or other agencies while in custody at Guantanamo Bay pales in comparison to the monumental tragedy of the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, which killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and left thousands injured or otherwise impacted by the crimes.

The Denver Post printed a profile of Jeffrey Colwell, a former colonel in the United States Marine Corps, who had prepared to defend Ghailani, when he was in military custody.

This role was complicated by the fact that Ghailani could not drive so whatever purchases were too large or heavy for his bicycle such as oxygen and acetylene tanks would have to be picked up by another person in a car.

[14] On May 26, 2004, United States Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that reports indicated that Ghailani was one of seven al-Qaeda members who were planning a terrorist action for the summer or fall of 2004.

Dismissing the threat, they claimed it was solely to divert attention from President Bush's plummeting poll numbers and to push the failings of the Invasion of Iraq off the front page.

[16] CSIS director Reid Morden voiced similar concerns, saying it seemed more like "election year" politics, than an actual threat—and The New York Times pointed out that one day before the announcement, they had been told by the Department of Homeland Security that there were no current risks.

The Ghailani memo accused him of the following:[21] The Department of Defense announced on August 9, 2007, that all fourteen of the "high-value detainees" who had been transferred to Guantanamo from the CIA's black sites, had been officially classified as "enemy combatants".

[23][24] The al-Qaeda suspect alleged to have been involved in the 1998 United States embassy bombings that killed 223 people and injured approximately 4,085 faced nine war crimes charges, six of them offenses that could have carried the death penalty, if he was convicted by a military tribunal, it was reported on March 31, 2008.

[30][31][32][33] On February 10, 2010, United States district court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered the Prosecution to review the record of Ghailani's detention in CIA's network of black sites.

It was reported that Kaplan was considering dismissing the charges on the grounds that due to Ghailani's long extrajudicial detention he had been denied the constitutional right to a speedy trial.

[36] Benjamin Weiser, writing in The New York Times reported that the summary, published during Ghailani's civilian trial, revealed new details about his life as an Osama bin Laden bodyguard.

[38][39] On October 6, 2010, in a short ruling that the judge said he would expand upon later that day, it was determined that a key witness, the Tanzanian Hussein Abebe, who may have issued statements crucial to implicating Ghailani during the time he was under CIA custody, would not be testifying in the trial.