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--- Begin Message --- -Caveat Lector- AP Exclusive: Little direct proof linking Kenyan terror suspects to al-Qaida hotel bombing
MATTHEW ROSENBERG, Associated Press WriterSaturday, October 25, 2003
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(10-25) 09:49 PDT NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Prosecutors have amassed a wealth of circumstantial evidence linking six Kenyans to the deadly al-Qaida bombing of a hotel last November. One suspect was spotted with the suspected bomb-builder, others married off their daughters to wanted al-Qaida operatives. But as the six men go on trial Monday, there appears to be little direct proof, according to 164 pretrial statements from witnesses and investigators seen by The Associated Press. The typed statements, most 1-3 pages long, were provided to the AP on Friday by a source close to the trial. They detail personal ties among the suspects and one's description of a later al-Qaida plot, but little else. The prosecutor, John Gacivih, said the complete case -- witness testimony and physical evidence, which he refused to detail -- will confirm the defendants' role in the attack that killed 15 people, including three Israelis. "It's presumptuous to make conclusions before you have all the evidence on the record," he said. The attorney for three of the suspects, Maobe Mao, called the case "entirely circumstantial" and said there was no physical evidence linking them to the bombing. "It's a political case -- the United States wanted people charged," he said. Among the documents viewed by the AP, there were no statements from the suspects, or U.S. and Israeli investigators. The first four suspects were charged June 23, days after then-U.S. Ambassador Johnnie Carson told a Kenyan television station that while other countries attacked by al-Qaida have managed to arrest suspects "in Kenya, there has not been a single arrest or conviction." Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network claimed responsibility for hotel attack and the August 1998 car bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, an attack that killed 219 people, including 12 Americans. Four men were convicted in the United States for that attack. Minutes before the hotel was bombed, unidentified assailants unsuccessfully tried to shoot down an Israeli charter jet as it was taking off from Mombasa's airport. No one has been charged for that attack. Fearing more terror, the United States and Britain warned their citizens away from Kenya in May, and British Airways temporarily suspended its flights to the East African country. By June -- after police reportedly uncovered an al-Qaida plot to destroy the new U.S. Embassy -- American pressure to clamp down on terrorism had intensified. One of the defendants, Salmin Mohammed Khamis, confessed after his arrest June 17 that he and other al-Qaida operatives planned to attack the new U.S. Embassy with a truck bomb and plane laden with explosives, according to a police report of his interrogation. But Khamis has not been charged for that alleged plot, and did not tell investigators he had any part in bombing the hotel north of Mombasa, an Indian Ocean port. The strongest evidence against another suspect, Omar Said Omar, appears to be that he was seen with Saleh Nabhan, the suspected bomb-builder who remains at large. The evidence against three other suspects -- Aboud Rogo Mohammed, Kubwa Mohammed Seif and his son, Mohammed Kubwa -- is mainly their personal ties to Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the hotel attack. All three denied knowing Abdullah Mohammed was part of al-Qaida and had been indicted in New York for the 1998 bombing. Rogo Mohammed, who lived near Mombasa, apparently brought Abdullah Mohammed to Siyu, a tiny fishing village on an island off Kenya's coast, sometime in 2001. Abdullah Mohammed lived in Seif's home in the village and in December 2002 married his daughter, Amina. Rogo Mohammed is married to the daughter of the sixth suspect, Said Saggar Ahmed, and taught at an Islamic school run by his father-in-law in Mombasa. Ahmed's other daughter is married to Mustafa Mohammed Fadhil, an Egyptian wanted for the 1998 embassy bombings.
Associated Press writer Tom Maliti contributed to this story.
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