H  U.S. JURY ACQUITS FORMER GUANTANAMO DETAINEE OF MOST CHARGES 

S1  The first former Guantanamo detainee to be tried in a civilian court was acquitted Wednesday of all but one of more than 280 charges of conspiracy and murder in the 1998 terrorist bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

S2  The case has been seen as a test of President Barack Obama's goal of trying detainees in federal court whenever feasible, and the result may again fuel debate over whether civilian courts are appropriate for trying terrorists.

S3  The defendant, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, 36, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings and property.
S4 He was acquitted of four counts of conspiracy, including conspiring to kill Americans and to use weapons of mass destruction.

S5  Because of the unusual circumstances of Ghailani's case -- after he was captured in Pakistan in 2004, he was held for nearly five years in a so-called black site run by the CIA and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- the prosecution faced significant legal hurdles even getting his case to trial.

S6  On the eve of trial last month, the government lost a key ruling that may have seriously damaged its chances of winning convictions.

S7  In the ruling, the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, barred it from using an important witness against Ghailani because the government had learned about the man through Ghailani's interrogation while he was in CIA custody, where his lawyers say he was tortured.

S8  The witness, Hussein Abebe, would have testified that he had sold Ghailani the large quantities of TNT used to blow up the embassy in Dar es Salaam, prosecutors told the judge, calling him "a giant witness for the government."

S9  On Wednesday, when the judge's clerk asked how the jury found on counts 11 to 223, which were all counts of murder, the jury foreman replied, "Not guilty."

S10  Ghailani, who remains in custody, faces a sentence of 20 years to life in prison.
S11 The unexpected verdict by the anonymous six-man, six-woman jury came in the fifth day of deliberations.

S12  Ghailani's lawyers -- Peter E. Quijano, Steve Zissou and Michael K. Bachrach -- had argued that their client was innocent and had been duped into assisting in the terrorist conspiracy.

S13  "This verdict is a reaffirmation that this nation's judicial system is the greatest ever devised," Quijano said.
S14 "It is truly a system of laws and not men, where, in the shadow of the World Trade Center, this jury acquitted Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani of 284 out of 285 counts."

