At the heart of the debate about where and how to prosecute the men accused of being terrorists who have been held at Guantanamo Bay has been the fear among many that the suspects, tried in a civilian court, would benefit from rights and protections they did not deserve.The detainees, the concern was, would argue that they had been tortured, and that their cases should be dismissed.
One of them, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who last year became the first Guantanamo detainee to actually be moved into the civilian court system, has argued that his nearly five years in detention before that had deprived him of a fundamental protection afforded all defendants in a federal court: the right to a speedy trial.
On Tuesday, a federal judge in Manhattan rejected Mr. Ghailani's claim, and cleared the way for federal prosecutors to try him for his suspected role in Al Qaeda's 1998 bombings of embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The judge's ruling is destined to further shape the debate about whether to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others accused of being 9/11 conspirators, in civilian court.
The debate stems from the government's policy since the Sept. 11 attacks to detain hundreds of terrorism suspects without trials, often for years.
But the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court in Manhattan, ruled that Mr. Ghailani's extended incarceration had no adverse impact on his ability to defend himself.
"There is no persuasive evidence that the delay in this prosecution has impaired Ghailani's ability to defend himself in any respect or significantly prejudiced him in any other way pertinent to the speedy trial analysis," Judge Kaplan wrote.
And in a nod to the political debate about trying terrorists in civilian courts, the judge noted: "The court understands that there are those who object to alleged terrorists, especially noncitizens, being afforded rights that are enjoyed by U.S. citizens. Their anger at wanton terrorist attacks is understandable. Their conclusion, however, is unacceptable in a country that adheres to the rule of law."
Mr. Ghailani is facing trial on Sept. 27 on charges he conspired in the two American embassy bombings. The authorities have said that he later trained with Al Qaeda and worked as a bodyguard and a document forger for Osama bin Laden.
After Mr. Ghailani was captured six years ago, he was held in secret overseas jails run by the C.I.A., where he was interrogated in the belief he had important intelligence information about Al Qaeda, the judge noted. In 2006, he was transferred to Guantanamo, and last year, the Obama administration ordered him moved into the civilian system, and he was brought to New York.
"The government is entitled to attempt to hold Ghailani accountable in a court of law for his alleged complicity in the murder of 224 people and the injury of more than 1,000 others," Judge Kaplan wrote.
The ruling comes two months after the judge rejected Mr. Ghailani's argument that his case should be dismissed on grounds of "outrageous" government conduct. Mr. Ghailani contends he was subjected to cruel interrogation techniques while in C.I.A. custody.
"The combined effect of the two rulings is to say that there is a way forward through the federal courts," said Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. "It's the green light," she said.
Of course, lawyers for other detainees, if they are brought into civilian court, would most likely try to distinguish the circumstances of their cases in order to argue, for example, that a detainee was prejudiced by a delay in a way Mr. Ghailani was not.
In his ruling, Judge Kaplan weighed the factors used to assess speedy trial claims, like the length of and reason for a delay, and the prejudice caused to a defendant. While the delay in bringing Mr. Ghailani to trial was long, he said, it "did not materially infringe upon any interest protected by the right to a speedy trial."
Mr. Ghailani's lawyers did not challenge the government's authority to detain him for intelligence gathering. But they said prosecuting him in civilian court so many years later on a 1998 indictment was "perhaps the most egregious violation in the history of speedy-trial jurisprudence."
Federal prosecutors disagreed, contending Mr. Ghailani was a "longstanding Al Qaeda terrorist" who was believed to have "actionable intelligence" about terrorist plots. "This was done, simply put, to save lives," wrote the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan.
Judge Kaplan noted that the specific interrogation techniques used on Mr. Ghailani in his two years of C.I.A. detention remain classified (he discusses them in a classified supplement to his decision). But those two years of delay, the judge said, "served compelling interests of national security."
"Suffice it to say," the judge added, citing the classified record, "the C.I.A. program was effective in obtaining useful intelligence from Ghailani throughout his time in C.I.A. custody."