Ghailani Sentenced To Life In Prison For African Embassy Bombings

Despite being found not guilty on 280 counts of murder/attempted murder but guilty of a single charge of conspiracy to destroy government property, Ahmed Ghailani was sentenced to life in prison for the deadly African embassy bombings.

The nearly simultaneous attacks in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killed 224 people and wounded thousands.

Mr. Ghailani, 36, was convicted on Nov. 17 of a single count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings and property, while being acquitted of more than 280 charges of murder and conspiracy.

But the many acquittals seemed to carry little weight with the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of United States District Court, who, before imposing the sentence, said that “Mr. Ghailani knew and intended that people would be killed as a result of his own actions and the conspiracy he joined.”

The judge rejected the defense’s request for a lesser sentence, saying, “The very purpose of the crime was to create terror by causing death and destruction.”

Mr. Ghailani, in the six years that the government says that he was a fugitive after the attacks, trained in Afghanistan with Al Qaeda, and later became a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden. He was captured in 2004 after a 14-hour gun battle with Pakistani authorities.

He will likely spend the rest of his life in Supermax.

The judge got this one right. The conspiracy to carry out the attacks was done to maximize the body count and inflict terror on the populace. The only suitable sentence was life in prison, so while it was unfortunate that the jury could not find him guilty on the hundreds of murder and other sundry charges, the end result is that he was still never going to live to see another day as a free man.