Islami News: US judge bans Guantanamo witness

The first civilian trial for a Guantanamo Bay detainee has been delayed after a judge told prosecutors they cannot predict their star witness.Lewis A Kaplan, the US district judge, blocked the government on Wednesday from calling a man who authorities said, sold explosives to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the defendant.Defence lawyers say investigators only learned almost the witness after Ghailani underwent harsh interrogation at a confidential CIA-run camp overseas between 2004 and 2006.

The tribunal has not reached this decision lightly," Kaplan wrote. "It is astutely aware of the perilous nature of the earth in which we live. But the composition is the stone upon which our nation rests. We must observe it not when it is convenient, but when fear and danger beckon in a different direction."The authorities immediately asked for a hold of the trial, which had been expected to start with opening statements on Wednesday, so that it has time to attract the ruling, should it settle to do so.The judge sent a consortium of 66 jurors home until Tuesday, but not before warning them to avoid following the event on the word or discussing it with anyone.Ghailani is charged with conspiring in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa.The attacks killed 224 people, including a dozen Americans.The judge issued his written three-page ruling after a hearing three weeks ago in which Hussein Abebe, the witness, testified about his relations with authorities."The regime has failed to show that Abebe's testimony is sufficiently attenuated from Ghailani's coerced statements to allow its reception in evidence," Kaplan wrote.The defense had asked the justice to exclude Abebe's testimony on the evidence that it would be the product of statements made by Ghailani to the CIA under duress.On that point, Kaplan said, "Abebe was identified and situated as a ending and direct outcome of statements made by Ghailani while he was held by the CIA. The administration has elected not to sue the details of Ghailani's treatment while in CIA custody. It has sought to take this unnecessary by asking the courtroom to acquire in deciding this question that everything Ghailani said while in CIA custody was coerced."The judge noted that he had previously rejected defence motions to ignore the indictment on the grounds that Ghailani was deprived of a quick trial and that his discourse by the CIA was so steep as to require termination of the charges.

Daily Update