NEW YORK -- The U.S. government has decided not to seek the death penalty against a former Guantánamo detainee charged in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

A letter released Monday advises a federal judge that Attorney General Eric Holder told prosecutors not to seek the death penalty in the New York trial of Ahmed Ghailani. His trial is scheduled for September 2010.

Authorities allege he was a bomb-maker, document forger and aide to Osama bin Laden. The attacks at embassies in Tanzania and Kenya killed 124 people, including 12 Americans.

Ghailani was brought to the United States in June as the lone transfer so far from military commissions to federal courts under a White House plan to empty the prison camps in southeast Cuba. The Zanzibar-born Ghailani was captured in Pakistan in 2004, held at an undisclosed CIA black site somewhere overseas until his transfer to U.S. military custody at Guantánamo in 2006 by order of President George W. Bush.

Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement that other defendants in the embassy bombings case have received life prison sentences or will not be subject to the death penalty because the U.S. agreed not to seek it as a condition of their extradition.

"Given those circumstances and other factors in this case, the attorney general authorized the U.S. Attorney to seek a life sentence," Miller said.

However, the government did seek the death penalty against two of four defendants convicted in 2001 of conspiracy in the attacks. A jury declined to vote for death though, leaving the men with life prison sentences.

A message left with a lawyer for Ghailani was not immediately returned Monday.

Prosecutors have said the case against Ghailiani will be similar to the 2001 trial when evidence included extensive discussion about al Qaeda, bin Laden and techniques used by terrorists.

Bin Laden, who remains a fugitive, is a defendant in the case as well.

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