Kenyan and Tanzanian Embassy
Bombers Trial: 2001

Defendants: Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali, Wadih El-Hage, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, Mohamed Saddiq Odeh
Crimes Charged: al-'Owhali, Mohamed, Odeh: Conspiracy and murder; El-Hage: Conspiracy and perjury
Chief Defense Lawyers: al-'Owhali: David P. Baugh, Frederick H. Cohn; Odeh: Anthony L. Ricco, Edward D. Wilford; El-Hage: Joshua L. Dratel, Sam A. Schmidt; Mohamed: David A. Ruhnke, Jeremy Schneider
Chief Prosecutors: Paul Butler, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Michael J. Garcia, Kenneth M. Karas
Judge: Leonard B. Sand
Place: New York, New York
Dates of Trial: February 5-May 29, 2001
Verdicts: All guilty of all charges
Sentences: al-'Owhali, El-Hage, Mohamed, Odeh: life imprisonment

SIGNIFICANCE: The trial in Federal District Court in New York of men accused of terrorist bombings in East Africa proves that a carefully and well-developed prosecution, with protection of the rights of the accused and with conclusive evidence, can produce justice even in the most appalling crimes.

In Nairobi, Kenya, on Friday morning, August 7, 1998, Prudence Bushnell, U.S. Ambassador to Kenya, was attending a meeting with Kenya's trade minister on the top floor of a bank building next door to the American embassy. Suddenly a huge explosion destroyed the seven-story building and ripped off the back of the embassy. It killed 213 people, including 12 Americans, and injured more than 4,000 others.

At almost the same moment, in the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, U.S. charge d'affaires John Lange was holding a staff meeting in his third-floor office when a bomb blasted walls and windows. It killed 11 Tanzanians and injured 85 people, including Americans. Both bombings occurred on the eighth anniversary of the arrival of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf War.

Linked to bin Laden

Within days, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) linked the bombings to Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, leader of a worldwide conspiracy to destroy U.S. government property and kill Americans. Bin Laden and 16 members of his terrorist organization, Al Qaeda, were indicted. Eleven members remained fugitives as four were arrested and brought to trial in Federal District Court in New York City. The trial was held 7,000 miles from the bombed embassies because the conspiracy was alleged to have grown from a Muslim refugee group centered, among other worldwide locations, in Brooklyn. Some of its members had been convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

As the trial opened on February 5, 2001, before Judge Leonard B. Sand, assistant U.S. attorney Paul Butler told the jury of seven women and five men that "all four defendants entered into an illegal agreement with Osama bin Laden and others to kill Americans anywhere in the world. And in the end, 224 men, women, and children lost their lives." The 302-count charge included individual indictments for murder for each death.

Defense attorney Jeremy Schneider, representing Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, conceded his client participated in the bombings but said he was a "pawn" who simply took orders. Attorneys for Mohamed Saddiq Odeh and Wadih El-Hage admitted their clients' ties to bin Laden but denied any violent activity. Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali's attorney, Frederick H. Cohn, offered no opening statement.

"The Snake is America"

The first witness was a government informant. Jamal Ahmed Mohamed Al-Fadl testified he heard bin Laden say, "The snake is America and we have to cut their head off and stop what they are doing in the Horn of Africa."

Questioned by prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Al-Fadl said Al Qaeda was "for focusing on jihad"—a declaration of a holy war—and implicated El-Hage in the violence. Cross-examining, El-Hage's attorney, Sam S. Schmidt, claiming his client was only a nonviolent business associate of bin Laden, tried to undermine Al-Fadl's credibility.

Over several days, the jury heard witnesses describe bin Laden's antiAmerican fatwahs, or religious declarations, and his group's responsibility for the deaths of American soldiers in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993. One witness said El-Hage, a naturalized American citizen in Texas, helped bin Laden buy a used jet plane in Dallas to fly anti-aircraft missiles from Pakistan to his Sudan headquarters.

Now the prosecutors read aloud the 52-page English translation of bin Laden's 1996 fatwah declaring holy war against the U.S. as he opposed the deployment of non-Islamic American troops to protect the holy Muslim shrines of his oil-rich Saudi peninsula after Iraq invaded Kuwait.

Prosecution witness L'Houssaine Kherchtou testified that Odeh and El-Hage had known each other in Kenya in the mid-1990s. He named other indicted fugitives as Al Qaeda members, saying Odeh traveled with them to oppose a United Nations mission that included American troops. On crossexamination, however, Kherchtou said he could not be sure of El-Hage's association with Al Qaeda.

Bombing a "Blunder"

The prosecutors introduced FBI agents who had interrogated the defendants. Special Agent John Anticev testified that Odeh said the Nairobi bombing was a "blunder" that killed so many Kenyans because the truck's drivers headed nose-first into the embassy, rather than backing in, so the explosion burst toward the adjacent building. Anticev said Odeh admitted membership in Al Qaeda and that in its military camps he learned how to use explosives.

The trial's most dramatic testimony came as Ambassador Bushnell gave details on the Nairobi explosion. As the ceiling caved in, she said, "I thought the building was going to collapse, and I was going to die." Descending the stairwell, she added, "there was blood everywhere. I could feel the person behind me bleeding onto my back."

FBI special agent Stephen Gaudin told the jury that defendant al-'Owhali agreed to describe his involvement if he could be guaranteed trial in the United States. The defendant, said the agent, called the Nairobi embassy "an easy target," with the bombing planned for late Friday morning when observant Muslims would be moving toward mosques and thus out of danger, and was targeted also because it had a female ambassador whose death would generate extra publicity. (A report filed after the bombing revealed that Ambassador Bushnell had earlier requested security improvements from the State Department and Defense Department, but none were made.)

Agent Gaudin added that al-'Owhali rode as a passenger in the bomb truck, carrying stun grenades. At the embassy gate, he jumped off, threw a grenade at the security guard so the truck could get past, then ran.

FBI special agent Donald Sachtleben described how the Toyota Dyna pickup truck's rear axle was hurled more than 700 meters as the blast blew out all embassy windows, produced major structural damage of the building, and reduced the seven-story building next door to rubble.

The Second Blast

Next, the prosecutors introduced survivors of the Dar es Salaam blast. Charge d'affaires Lange told how the explosion rocked his office during his meeting. Embassy translator Justine Mdobilu, whose braided hair filled with bits of flying glass, said, "I thought I was dreaming. When I looked around, people were bleeding." Information officer Elizabeth Slater, who was pulled from the rubble of a collapsed wall, said, "Coming down the stairwell, there were all kinds of body parts."

Witnesses described the Tanzania bomb truck, a Nissan Atlas sold by a Tanzanian driver to Ahmed Ghailani and Sheik Ahmed Salim Swedan, two of the indicted fugitives. Swedan had earlier been identified as the buyer of the Toyota Dyna that carried the Kenya bomb. A Tanzanian welder said Swedan paid him to alter it to hold batteries in the rear.

Evidence against Mohamed showed he had been seen meeting with the buyers of the Nissan Atlas, that his passport had been found in the home of one buyer, and that he rented the house where the Tanzania bomb was built. FBI agent Abigail Perkins testified that Mohamed told her he owned the bombers' Suzuki utility car and was responsible for helping grind the TNT that was loaded into the truck. He participated, he told her, "to help his Muslim brothers."

The Perjury Trail

The prosecutors turned to the 21 counts of perjury against El-Hage. They produced a trail of phone calls, faxes, and letters indicating El-Hage was in contact with bin Laden people he denied knowing. They revealed his fingerprints on a letter to bin Laden's military commander, whom El-Hage had told the grand jury he did not know. They introduced receipts on shipments of goods from El-Hage to Odeh, whom El-Hage claimed he never knew.

FBI forensic chemist Kelly Mount testified that a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and a bed sheet found in Odeh's travel bag carried traces of explosives TNT or PETN. Cross-examined, Mount said it was possible but not probable that bomb residue was transferred to the clothing by bomb-scene investigators.

Closing their presentation after 92 witnesses and 1,700 exhibits, the prosecutors read claims of responsibility for the bombings that had been faxed to media outlets in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and France. The "Islamic Army for the Liberation of Holy Places," said the faxes, promised "to strike at American interests everywhere" until U.S. troops were withdrawn from Saudi Arabia.

Defense lawyers opened their case on April 16 with British forensic scientist Dr. John Lloyd testifying for Odeh. He said the explosive residue found on Odeh's clothing could have been as small as a speck of dust transferred by a handshake and was impossible to trace.

Supporting El-Hage's position that he worked for bin Laden but had nothing to do with terrorist activities, his lawyers presented a Nairobi businessman named Odeh who engaged El-Hage in gemstone trading and other ventures. The witness said his name was spelled and pronounced "Oudeh" in Arabic. This rebutted the prosecution's contention that shipments from El-Hage to someone named Oudeh went to defendant Odeh.

Calling no further witnesses, the defense rested. No defendant testified. In closing arguments, prosecutor Kenneth M. Karas charged El-Hage with repeated lying "to protect the Al Qaeda conspiracy," and El-Hage defense attorney Schmidt charged prosecution witness AI-Fadl with repeated lying to protect himself. Odeh lawyer Anthony L. Ricco said his client's "association with Al Qaeda is based on religious beliefs," not violence.

Mohamed attorney David A. Ruhnke cited his client's cooperation with the FBI, without which "there would be very little evidence," and contended "he never met Osama bin Laden." Al-'Owhali lawyer Cohn said his client should be acquitted because his confession was coerced as he was imprisoned "in terrible conditions, in fear of his life from jailers who had to hate him."

The jury deliberated from May 10 to May 29. It found all four men guilty on all 302 counts. It then met to consider, one at a time, what penalty to impose on each. All four men received sentences of life imprisonment.

—Bernard Ryan, Jr.

Suggestions for Further Reading

Bodansky, Yossef. Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America. Rocklin, Calif.: Prima Publishing, 1999.

Grosscup, Beau. The Newest Explosions of Terrorism: Latest Sites of Terrorism in the l990s and Beyond. Far Hills, N.J.: New Horizon, 1998.

Hoffman, Bruce. Inside Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

Huband, Mark. Warriors of the Prophet: The Struggle for Islam. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999.

Labeviere, Richard, and Martin DeMers, trans. Dollars for Terror: The United States and Islam. New York: Algora Publishing, 2000.

Reeve, Simon. The New Jackals: Ranzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden, and the Future of Terrorism. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999.

Tripp, Aili Mari. Changing the Rules: The Politics of Liberalization and the Urban Informal Economy in Tanzania. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.