WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration on Tuesday transferred its first Guantánamo detainee to U.S. soil by having U.S. marshals move a Tanzanian man from Guantánamo to New York City for trial on capital terror charges.

He pleaded not guilty in two embassy bombings during an appearance in federal court.

A predawn Justice Department statement said Ahmed Ghailani, about 35, was being housed in the Metropolitan Correction Center, a medium to maximum-security lockup in downtown Manhattan that has held everyone from alleged al Qaeda arch-terrorists to financier Bernard Madoff.

The announcement drew a sharp response from House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio, who said in a statement, 'This is the first step in the Democrats' plan to import terrorists into America'' despite ``the overwhelming opposition of the American people.''

But Randy Mastro, former New York City deputy mayor under Rudolph Giuliani and co-chair of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher's litigation & crisis management groups, said the New York venue is ``very fitting, as it is the site of two previous terrorist attacks.''

Ghailani, born in Zanzibar and captured in Afghanistan, had been at a secret Super Max-style lock-up at the remote U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba for former CIA captives called Camp 7.

During his arraignment Tuesday afternoon in federal court in Manhattan, Ghailani pleaded not guilty as an alleged co-conspirator in the Aug. 7, 1998, U.S. Embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed 234 people.

The development illustrated a White House commitment to break with the Bush administration and move some of the 200 or so war on terror detainees from military to civilian trials.

It came just weeks after Congress stripped some $80 million from a supplemental Defense Department budget the White House had sought to pay lawyers' fees and possibly use on infrastructure costs as it plans to empty the prison camps at Guantánamo by Jan. 22.

Ghailani is the fourth captive to leave the detention center since Barack Obama became president and signed an executive order for Guantánamo's closure on his second full day in office.

Two were freed in Europe. A Yemeni man was found dead in his cell earlier this month in what prison camp officials said was suicide. His remains were sent for burial in his homeland.

Obama's administration is currently also revising the special war-on-terror court the Bush administration created at Guantánamo called military commissions.

But it has yet to say which prisoners could still face commission trials and which could go to federal court.

''With his appearance in federal court today, Ahmed Ghailani is being held accountable for his alleged role in the bombing of U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and the murder of 224 people,'' Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement issued by the Justice Department that announced the transfer.

''The Justice Department has a long history of securely detaining and successfully prosecuting terror suspects through the criminal justice system,'' he said. ``We will bring that experience to bear in seeking justice in this case.''

While a first, and at a politically sensitive time in the ongoing review of the Guantánamo case review, the Ghailani transfer was not unexpected.

A Pentagon official withdrew military commissions charges against Ghailani two weeks ago, once Holder announced his preference to try him in a civilian setting on a 1990s-era indictment that had been unsealed years before the Tanzanian was ever captured by U.S. authorities.

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