Trial for blasts at embassies with jury

NEW YORK, Nov. 10 (UPI) -- The fate of a man accused of conspiring to bomb U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 is with a jury seated in New York.

The jury is to begin deliberations Wednesday in the case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, charged with conspiracy and murder in the embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and injured thousands of others, CNN reported.

Ghailani's defense attorney told the jury Tuesday his client was manipulated by al-Qaida, which claimed responsibility for the bombings.

"Call him a dupe, call him a pawn -- used, set up like a bowling pin, in the immortal words of Jerry Garcia," defense attorney Peter Quijano said. "But don't call him guilty."

U.S. prosecutors accused Ghailani of mass murder, saying the 36-year-old Tanzanian was a key player in securing trucks that carried the bomb in Tanzania and securing other materials.

"He is a mass murderer who has the blood of hundreds on his hands," Assistant U.S. Attorney Harry Chernoff said in his closing argument.

Ghailani is the first detainee held at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be tried in a civilian court, CNN said. Coalition forces captured him in Pakistan in 2004. He was moved Guantanamo in 2006 and transferred to a federal prison in New York last year.