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From Phil Hirschkorn
CNN New York Bureau

NEW YORK (CNN) -- South Africa's highest court ruled Monday that the extradition of one of the defendants convicted Tuesday in the embassy bombings trial was "unlawful." The decision is being sent to the U.S. District Court in Manhattan where all four defendants were found guilty on all 302 counts of conspiracy, murder and perjury.

The Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that Khalfan Khamis Mohamed's rights were violated when he was extradited to the United States in October 1999 without an assurance that prosecutors would not pursue capital punishment.

Mohamed, 27, a Tanzanian, was convicted of carrying out the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on August 7, 1998, and of the murders of the 11 people who died in it. The attack took place only minutes after the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, was bombed, killing 213 people, including 12 Americans.

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The jury will now determine whether Mohamed should receive the maximum penalty the conviction carries, death by lethal injection.

According to Judge Arthur Chaskalson, president of the Constitutional Court, the extradition "infringed on Mohamed's right ... to human dignity, to life, and not to be treated or punished in a cruel or inhumane or degrading way."

The court also said the government failed to follow procedures such as giving Mohamed a lawyer.

South Africa abolished the death penalty in 1995 and its laws prohibit exposing anyone to the risk of execution through extradition or deportation, said Paul Setsetse, a Justice Ministry spokesman.

Setsetse added that Mohamed did not fight deportation.

Mohamed was arrested on October 5, 1999, by South African police in Cape Town, where he had been living as a fugitive since a few days after the embassy bombings. After applying for political asylum under an alias, Mohamed obtained a temporary residency permit and supported himself as a hamburger cook.

By October 1999, FBI agents were closing in on Mohamed, having traced a year-old fake Tanzanian passport application to his South Africa residence.

FBI agents were on the scene when Mohamed attempted to renew his immigration papers. South African police arrested him for entering the country under false pretenses, initiated deportation, and turned him over to U.S. custody.

FBI agent Abigail Perkins, who interrogated Mohamed, testified that when Mohamed was asked if he had a choice between going to America and Tanzania, he responded, "Take me to America."

The South African court acknowledged it could not undo the constitutional wrong against Mohamed, but ordered its decision be immediately sent to the U.S. District Court.

"We respect the sovereignty of the United States," Setsetse said. "As to whether the judgment will hold any water in the proceedings over there, that we do not know."

Another defendant in the embassy bombings conspiracy case, Mamduh Mahmoud Salim, was extradited from Germany only after U.S. prosecutors guaranteed Salim would not face the death penalty. Salim, 43, an Iraqi in U.S. custody since December 1998, is accused of being a founder of Saudi exile Osama bin Laden's Islamic militant group, al Qaeda, and one of its leading financial officers.

Mohamed also was convicted Tuesday of participating in a worldwide conspiracy to kill Americans and destroy U.S. property that culminated in the embassy bombings. His co-defendants -- Mohamed al-'Owhali, 24, a Saudi, Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, 36, a Jordanian, and Wadih el Hage, 40, a Lebanese-born naturalized American -- were likewise convicted of the conspiracy.

Al-'Owhali was convicted of the murders of the 213 people who died in the Kenya bombing for which he faces the death penalty. Odeh was convicted of aiding and abetting the murders in the Kenya bombing and faces a maximum of life in prison. El Hage, who was not accused in the bombings, was convicted of lying to a federal grand jury to protect the conspiracy; he faces a maximum of life in prison.