He was indicted in New York before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and four of his named co-conspirators are already serving life sentences in a supermax prison in Colorado.
In the months leading up to the attack in Tanzania, Ghailani obtained and stored bomb materials, scouted the embassy and escorted the Egyptian suicide bomber from Kenya to Dar es Salaam, the Tanzanian capital, according to a federal indictment and a charging document at Guantanamo Bay.
The diminutive Ghailani was known to some of his confederates as "Fupi," Swahili for "small," and he bicycled around Dar es Salaam to obtain bomb components because he couldn't drive, according to U.S. investigators. The bombing killed 11 people, all Africans, and a simultaneous blast in Nairobi, Kenya, killed 213 people, including 12 Americans.
The former Islamic cleric now presents himself as a contrite and exploited victim of al-Qaeda conspirators.
"I would like to apologize to the United States government for what I did before," said Ghailani at a hearing at Guantanamo Bay. "It was without my knowledge what they were doing, but I helped them."
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