## Facts

- Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was indicted in 1998 in the Southern District of New York for terrorism-related offenses arising from the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
- He was captured abroad in 2004 and then held for years in CIA custody at undisclosed locations, where he alleged he was tortured and coercively interrogated.
- Ghailani was later transferred to the Department of Defense facility at Guantánamo Bay.
- In 2009, he was transferred to New York for federal criminal prosecution on the 1998 indictment.
- The government represented it would not use statements or information obtained from CIA interrogations at trial.
- Ghailani moved to dismiss the indictment based on (1) alleged abusive treatment in CIA custody as a due process violation and (2) delay between indictment/capture and arraignment as a speedy-trial violation.

## Issues

1. Whether alleged torture and mistreatment during CIA custody required dismissal of the indictment as a remedy for “outrageous government conduct” under the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause.
2. Whether the delay between capture and arraignment violated the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial or the Speedy Trial Act, requiring dismissal.

## Decision

- The court denied the motion to dismiss the indictment.
- Assuming arguendo that Ghailani could prove serious mistreatment, the court held dismissal was not an appropriate remedy on this record.
- The court concluded that the government’s decision to detain and interrogate Ghailani for intelligence and national-security purposes, while delaying prosecution, did not require termination of the criminal case where CIA-derived evidence would not be used at trial.
- The court found dismissal unwarranted in light of the government’s justifications for delay and the availability of remedies other than terminating the prosecution.

## Legal Principles

- Dismissal of an indictment for governmental misconduct is a drastic, disfavored remedy reserved for truly extreme cases.
- The “outrageous government conduct” doctrine, if available at all, is applied narrowly and rarely supports dismissal.
- Alleged coercive interrogation and abuse occurring outside the evidentiary presentation in the criminal case does not, by itself, require dismissal where the prosecution disclaims use of the challenged statements or their fruits.
- National-security and intelligence objectives may provide substantial justification for delay in bringing a captured defendant to federal court, and dismissal is not automatic absent a showing warranting that remedy.
- Misconduct by officials may be addressed through targeted remedies (including potential criminal or civil accountability) rather than extinguishing a prosecution for serious offenses.

## Conclusion

The court refused to dismiss a long-pending terrorism indictment based on alleged CIA torture and extended pretrial delay, holding that even if mistreatment occurred, dismissal was not the proper due process remedy and the circumstances did not justify terminating the prosecution where the government would not use CIA-derived evidence.


United States v. Ghailani, 751 F. Supp. 2d 502 (S.D.N.Y. 2010)