Guantanamo prisoner becomes first to go to US court

The first Guantanamo Bay detainee to be transferred to US soil was due in court in New York Tuesday in a politically charged test for President Barack Obama's plan to close the controversial prison.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian national who had been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility since September 2006, was to be arraigned in a federal court in New York at 4:00 pm (2000 GMT).

He is charged with taking part in the August 7, 1998 bombing of the US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya.

This is a first test for White House plans to shut down Guantanamo and bring inmates to trial or send them to their countries of origin.

The pledge was a major element in Obama's presidential campaign last year, along with an order to end officially sanctioned torture. Republicans have attacked the Democrat for what they say is a dangerous priority on human rights over national security.

But Attorney General Eric Holder said the transfer of Ghailani served justice and posed no threat to the United States.

"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," Holder said in a statement.

"The Justice Department has a long history of securely detaining and successfully prosecuting terror suspects through the criminal justice system, and we will bring that experience to bear in seeking justice in this case," Holder said.

Ghailani faces 286 counts of murder, conspiracy to murder, bomb and maim, and conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction against US nationals, charges for which he could receive the death penalty.

According to the indictment from March 2001, Ghailani also conspired with Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other Qaeda members to kill Americans.

Expectations had grown in recent weeks that Ghailani would be the first Guantanamo inmate to be brought to US shores and tried in a civilian court.

The Guantanamo detention center still houses about 240 so-called "war on terror" inmates, most of whom have been detained since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Obama wants the facility closed by January 2010.

He hopes other countries will take in some of the 50 detainees so far cleared for release. An Algerian national has been taken in by France, while an Ethiopian-born British resident was returned to Britain, but finding homes for the others has proven to be difficult.

Many leaders of countries who called for the facility to be shut down have refused to harbor its former inmates, and the US Congress has opposed moves to let them stay in the United States.

Obama is under intense pressure to decide the fate of the detainees from 30 nations at the camp, many of whom have not been charged.

Some may be impossible to prosecute, as their evidence may be inadmissible in court due to interrogation methods branded by critics as torture. However, they might also be deemed too dangerous to release.

Last week Canada turned down Washington's requests to take in Guantanamo detainees, becoming the third US ally to put a snag in efforts to shutter the infamous prison.

Ottawa last month turned down a US request to take in three of 17 Chinese Muslim detainees cleared for release from the US naval base in southern Cuba because of "significant security concerns," Canadian immigration ministry spokesman Alykhan Velshi told AFP.

Germany and Australia also have been urged to take in Guantanamo inmates, but both have appeared reticent.