Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, 36, a Tanzanian from Zanzibar, is accused of conspiring in the 1998 al Qaeda car bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.
His monthlong trial in Manhattan federal court has been seen as a test of U.S. President Barack Obama's approach to prosecuting some of the 174 men held at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. military prison in Cuba, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Obama has vowed to close the prison at Guantanamo amid international condemnation of the treatment of detainees, but he has run into political resistance at home.
In his closing argument, Assistant U.S. Attorney Harry Chernoff told the 12-member jury Ghailani conspired with senior al Qaeda operatives to mount "the most spectacular attacks on America to that point."
Dismissing defense arguments that Ghailani was an errand boy for older militants with no knowledge of the plot, Chernoff told the jury Ghailani was not "just with them, he was one of them. He wasn't just along for the ride, he helped build the bomb."
