In the first civilian trial of a former Guantanamo detainee, the word Guantanamo was not uttered before the jury as the case began Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Instead, a prosecutor focused on what he said was the defendant's role in a 1998 plot to bomb two U.S. Embassies in East Africa. The defendant, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, participated 'because he and his accomplices were committed to al-Qaida's overriding goal, killing Americans,' the prosecutor, Nicholas Lewin, told the jury in his opening statement. Ghailani helped buy the truck that was used to bomb one embassy, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and about 20 large gas tanks that were packed inside the truck to increase the force of the blast and kill or wound more people, Lewin said. That bombing killed 11 people; a nearly simultaneous attack on the American Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, killed 213 people. Thousands of people were wounded in the attacks, which were orchestrated by al-Qaida's East Africa cell. The trial of Ghailani has been widely anticipated since last year, when he became the first Guantanamo detainee moved into the civilian system. After he was captured in 2004, he spent nearly five years at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Earlier, he was in overseas jails run by the Central Intelligence Agency, where his lawyers have said that he was tortured. In the trial, there were no references to Guantanamo and the CIA's so-called black sites -- or to the claims of torture -- because the government and the defense agreed to limit their focus to the events around the 1998 attacks. One of Ghailani's lawyers, Steve Zissou, told jurors that Ghailani, a Tanzanian man in his mid-30s, was innocent at the time of the attacks, and that he was an immature, trusting, naive 'creature of his surroundings' who enjoyed watching cartoons and had been duped by a group of older men who turned out to be part of the East Africa terrorism cell. It became clearer, meanwhile, how prosecutors intend to prove their case. Lewin said, for example, that jurors would hear from welders who sold Ghailani the gas tanks used in the attacks. The evidence will also show that Ghailani and other conspirators escaped together to Pakistan one day before the attacks, the prosecutors said, adding that Ghailani used a false name and a fake passport. 'The defendant's jobs were done,' Lewin said. 'He didn't want to get caught, so he didn't stick around.' The trial's first witness, John Lange, who was the American charge d'affaires in Tanzania, described being seated in a meeting in his office when he heard 'a very low rumbling noise,' and then high glass windows blew in, landing on him and his colleagues. None of them were seriously hurt, but he recalled leaving the building and seeing a man lying on the ground amid the wreckage, his body blackened and charred. 