Sat before me were W.J Corbette, FBI, and Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) agent Robert Iorio.

The New York jury deliberating in the trial of accused embassy bomber Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani has more than the defendant's fate in its hands. A guilty verdict, should there be one, is likely to revive the Obama administration's plans to try other Guantanamo Bay detainees in civilian courts.

When I was down in Guantánamo a few months ago, a veteran German journalist let it slip that she didn't much care for the place. "This," she confided in me, and many of the other journalists there as well, "is the worst place I have ever visited in my entire career."

The first civilian trial of a former Guantanamo Bay detainee is set to begin in a New York courtroom on Wednesday.