By Chad Groening,OneNewsNow
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani
The retired naval officer who commanded the USS Cole when it was hit by terrorists says President Obama made an irresponsible decision to transfer a terrorist suspect from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility to New York City for prosecution.
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani is set to go on trial for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. He is the first detainee from the military prison in Guantanamo Bay,Cuba,to be transferred to the United States under an Obama administration plan to prosecute some of them in the federal court system.
But critics of the move wonder what happens if the suspect is acquitted —will he just be set free in New York,they ask. Commander Kirk Lippold (USN-Ret.) is the senior military fellow at Military Families United.
“We may have the evidence necessary to convict him of the crimes. That,however,does not necessarily permit the president to just yank him out of Guantanamo Bay,in the dead of night,bring him to the United States and put him up,”he contends.
Obama has yet to deal with the larger issue of Gitmo,according to Lippold.