The first detainee transferred from Guantanamo Bay to a U.S. civilian court will go on trial on Sept. 13, 2010, Reuters cited a Manhattan federal court judge as saying today. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian national, has been charged with conspiring in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 224 people. He was transferred to New York last month to face criminal charges after being held at Guantanamo in Cuba since 2006. President Barack Obama has announced the prison camp for foreign terrorism suspects would be closed by the end of January 2010. Earlier this week, lawyers for Ghailani asked U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan for access to CIA "black sites" where they say Ghailani was subject to interrogation. Detainees at these sites in unidentified countries were interrogated with harsh techniques that included waterboarding. But in court on Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Raskin said prosecutors would not be offering statements Ghailani allegedly made while in the custody of foreign governments. Raskin also said he had not yet decided on whether he would seek the death penalty.
