<div><p> Lawyers for the first detainee transferred from Guantanamo to civilian trial in the United States urged a court to drop charges because he was tortured and blocked from a speedy trial.</p><p>Prosecutors, however, argued that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian accused of involvement in bloody 1998 attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, could not be quickly tried because of "national security" while he underwent interrogation.</p><p>Judge Lewis Kaplan in a New York federal court did not issue an immediate ruling.</p><p>In oral arguments before Kaplan, defense attorneys said the authorities broke the law when they held Ghailani five years without trial.</p><p>He was kept at a secret CIA prison, or "black site," after his capture in 2004, then was taken to the controversial Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba in 2006, and transferred to New York last year.</p><p>"For the first two months in the black site..., he literally did not know whether the next morning he'd be taken out and shot," attorney Peter Quijano said.</p><p>The treatment "reduced him to a state of helplessness, where he was physically, emotionally and psychologically unable to resist."</p><p>Quijano said the government "ignored and was indifferent" to Ghailani's US legal right to a quick trial after indictment.</p><p>But prosecutors say that Ghailani underwent "enhanced interrogation" because he knew critical intelligence about Al Qaeda that investigators needed in order to save American lives.</p><p>"Concern for national security was much more important" than hurrying to trial, Assistant US Attorney Michael Farbiarz said.</p><p>Farbiarz added that Ghailani never demanded a fast trial. "There was a strategic utility to him to waiting and after it was no longer useful he started waving his hands."</p><p>The 1998 US embassy attacks killed 224 people and injured more than 5,000. Ghailani, allegedly a former cook and bodyguard to Osama bin Laden, pleaded not guilty to federal conspiracy charges in June in New York.</p><p>His case is a test of President Barack Obama's decision to close Guantanamo and end years of shadowy legal procedures against terrorism suspects.</p><p>New York is due to host the trial of five men accused of plotting the September 11, 2001 attacks against the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington.</p><p>Defense challenges for those men are expected to echo some of the issues -- particularly the use of torture and denial of due process -- raised over Ghailani.</p><p>Such cases are so sensitive that much evidence cannot be given in open court and court filings are heavily redacted.</p><p>Quijano was stopped by prosecutors and his own legal team when he mentioned during his presentation that what the government calls "enhanced interrogation" was used on Ghailani for 14 hours over a five-day period.</p><p>He had apparently entered into classified information.</p><p>Ghailani's defense says they have an almost impossible job in preparing for a trial since their client has during multiple interrogations told his captors everything he knows.</p><p>Prosecutors, Quijano said, "know everything. Any possible strategic (defense) avenue that is still open to us they know.... They can also anticipate what we can and cannot do."</p><p>Farbiarz said Ghailani was manipulating the system, "using the motion as a shot to dismissing the indictment -- to avoid trial at all costs."</p><p>"Dismissal here would be inappropriate," he said.</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=66736575&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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