US Moves Nairobi Embassy Bomb Suspect To Cuba

Story by NATION Correspondent NEW YORK

NEW YORK, September 8, 2006 – A Tanzanian allegedly involved in the 1998 Nairobi and Dar embassy bombings has been transferred from a secret CIA prison to the US military detention centre in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, captured in Pakistan in 2004, will be tried by an American military commission if the US Congress approves proposed rules for such proceedings, said President George W. Bush.

Mr. Ghailani’s planned prosecution "will send a clear message to those who kill Americans. No matter "how long it takes, we will find you and bring you to justice."

The 32-year-old Tanzanian is among 14 alleged terrorists recently transferred to Guantanamo from CIA-run interrogation centers at undisclosed locations outside the US.

Mr. Bush’s announcement on Wednesday marked the first time that he has acknowledged the existence of secret CIA detention centers. He insisted that those questioned in the centers had not been tortured.

Also included in the group of 14 is Gouled Hassan Darrad, a leader of a Somali Islamist organization that allegedly murdered a Kenyan aid worker, Florence Chepkemei, in March 2004.

A court in the self-declared republic of Somaliland in November last year sentenced five suspects with killing Ms Chepkemei, an employee of the German aid agency GTZ, and a colleague.

The two aid workers died in an ambush on the busy Hargeysa-Berbera road.

Those found guilty for murder were Jama Abdi, Ali Muse, Daud Salah, Ali Muhamed and Farhan Abdillahi.

Purported masterminds of the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon are also among those moved to Guantanamo, Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Ghailani is said to have taken part in a meeting in Nairobi’s Hilltop Hotel at which members of an al Qaeda cell made final preparations for the August 7, 1998, bombings.

He is accused of buying some of the explosive materials used in the Dar attack in which killed 12 people. Another 212 died in the attack on the American embassy in Nairobi.

Source: The Nation

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