Guantanamo detainee arrives in NY!

Profile: Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani

The first Guantanamo detainee who is to be tried in a US civilian court has arrived in New York, officials say.

Ahmed Ghailani has been transferred to face charges in a New York court in connection with the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa.

Mr Ghailani, a Tanzanian, was seized in Pakistan in 2004. He is expected to make an initial court appearance in Manhattan later on Tuesday.

He was taken to Guantanamo with other "high value" detainees in late 2006.

His transfer comes as the Obama administration struggles to find a way to make good its election promise to close Guantanamo Bay within a year of taking office.

Correspondents say Mr Ghailani's trial will be an important test case for the administration's plan to shut the prison camp and bring some of the suspects to trial.

The US government hopes to transfer some of the detainees to other countries but negotiations have proved difficult, particularly over the issue of whether the US is willing to also receive detainees.

Congress has rejected an administration request for funding to close down Guantanamo, amid widespread opposition to bringing detainees on to the US mainland.

The BBC's Rob Watson says the case of Ahmed Ghailani is, in many ways, one of the least problematic for the administration.

He was first charged in 1998 after an extensive FBI investigation and there is therefore plenty of evidence against him.

Most of the other detainees have never been charged and would be hard to prosecute in regular criminal courts, our correspondent says.

"With his appearance in federal court today, Ahmed Ghailani is being held accountable for his alleged role in the bombing of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and the murder of 224 people," a statement by US Attorney General Eric Holder said.

Mr Ghailani said he did not know of the Dar es Salaam attack beforehand

The justice department said he faced 286 counts. They include conspiring with Osama Bin Laden and other members of al-Qaeda to kill Americans around the world, and murder charges for each of the victims of the embassy attacks of 7 August 1998.

According to the transcript of a closed-door hearing in March 2007, Mr Ghailani admitted delivering explosives used to blow up the US embassy in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam.

However, he told the hearing he did not know about the attack beforehand and apologised to the US government and the victims' families.

Investigators say he left Africa just before the bombings.

Mr Ghailani is thought to have been born on the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar in 1970 or 1974 - making him 39 or 35 years old. He is said to speak fluent English.

He is alleged to have risen through the ranks of al-Qaeda to become a bodyguard of Osama Bin Laden.

According to the US transcript, he admitted visiting an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan after the bombings. But he denied being a member of al-Qaeda.

Analysts described him as a very important figure, who was probably sent to east Africa at the time of the bombings by Osama Bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

It is suggested that Mr Ghailani fled to Afghanistan after being indicted in 1998.

BBC NEWS REPORT.