The Obama administration announced early Thursday that it would move its first Guantánamo detainee to civilian trial on U.S. soil -- a Tanzanian captive who was indicted years ago in New York City for the 1998 East Africa embassies bombing.

Attorney General Eric Holder issued the statement on the same day President Barack Obama was to deliver a major speech on his plans for emptying the controversial prison camps in southeast Cuba.

The accused, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, has been held at Guantánamo in a segregated lockup for former CIA-held prisoners since President Bush ordered his transfer there in September 2006. He is also under charges at the special war court Bush created, the military commissions.

While at Guantánamo he reportedly told military officers of his remorse for any role he had in the coordinated car bombings of the embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. More than 220 people perished in the attacks on Aug. 7, 1998 -- 12 of them Americans.

''It was without my knowledge what they were doing, but I helped them,'' Ghailani told a panel of military officers on March 17, 2007.

``So I apologize to the United States government for what I did. And I'm sorry for what happened to those families who lost, who lost their friends and their beloved ones.''

The Ghailani decision revives a decade-old case that was first sworn by New York federal prosecutor Mary Jo White during the Clinton administration that also charged Osama bin Laden and other top al Qaeda leadership with attacks on the U.S. embassies.

''By prosecuting Ahmed Ghailani in federal court, we will ensure that he finally answers for his alleged role in the bombing of our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya,'' Holder said in a statement.

''This administration is committed to keeping the American people safe and upholding the rule of law, and by closing Guantánamo and bringing terrorists housed there to justice, we will make our nation stronger and safer,'' the attorney general said.

Holder did not specify when Ghailani would be sent to New York, and his statement noted that military prosecutors have sought to delay hearings in his war crimes case that mirror the charges at Camp Justice in Guantánamo.

Thursday's Justice Department statement said the federal criminal case against Ghailani alleges he helped bombers buy a Nissan truck and oxygen and acetylene tanks that were used in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania.

He also allegedly helped load boxes of explosives, cylinder tanks, batteries, detonators, fertilizer and sand bags into the back of the truck in the weeks immediately before the bombing. Ghailani departed Africa for Pakistan the night before the bombing.

The five-foot, four-inch Zanzibar-born Ghailani was captured in 2004 and by 2007 the Pentagon released a transcript of his Combatant Status Review Tribunal at Guantánamo in which he told the panel of U.S. military officers that he was admitting to his activities without force or coercion.

In 2007, at Guantánamo, he denied conducting surveillance of the U.S. Embassy in his homeland prior to the attacks of Aug. 7, 1998. But, he said he did assist in delivering the explosives that turned a Nissan pickup into a lethal truck bomb.

Moreover, he said, he didn't realize the U.S. Embassy was the target and instead believed the explosives were bound for a diamond mine in Somalia as well as a ''training camp'' in Somalia.

Ghailani said he joined al Qaeda only after the 1998 embassy blast when fellow bombers took him to Afghanistan, where he trained in detonation skills at an al Qaeda camp called Farouk.

He described al Qaeda training in almost matter-of-fact terms, saying he wanted to get some military skills because of various conflicts in Africa.

He also said he worked as an al Qaeda document forger, preparing fake passports for fellow al Qaeda members to move between countries across international borders.

He said he had met both bin Laden and Khalid Sheik Mohammed in Afghanistan, but never swore an Islamic oath toward bin Laden as emir of a worldwide anti-American movement, which had been a part of the military's case against him.

He fled to Pakistan after the Sept. 11 attacks with fellow al Qaeda members and was captured in 2004, he said.

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