N.Y. Bomb Suspect Linked to ‘Sensational Confessions’ : Blast: Mubarak is quoted in a London paper as saying Egyptians learned how trade center operation was carried out--and who did it.

A suspect in the World Trade Center bombing made “sensational confessions” before he was turned over to U.S. authorities, Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak said in an interview published Friday.

Mubarak said the suspect, Mahmud Abouhalima, told Egyptian interrogators “how the operation was carried out and of those who carried it out.”

Asked whether Abouhalima implicated extremists linked to Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, the leader of a New Jersey mosque, Mubarak told the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper: “It seems so. I don’t want to go further than that.”

Six people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured in the New York bombing on Feb. 26.

Mubarak said he was “not at liberty to disclose these confessions now because U.S. investigation into the bombing is still under way. . . . I do not want to say what he told us because this will bring disaster to all of them (militants).”

Four other suspects are under arrest, including some who attended Abdul Rahman’s mosque. A sixth man has been indicted but has not been arrested.

The Lebanese-run Arabic-language daily said Mubarak made the comments in London on Thursday, before his talks with British Prime Minister John Major. He is scheduled to fly to Washington today to meet with President Clinton.

Mubarak denied that Egypt had turned Abouhalima over to the FBI in exchange for the extradition of Abdul Rahman, whom Egypt has sought to prosecute on terrorism charges. “Abouhalima himself asked to be sent back to the United States to prove his innocence,” Mubarak said.

Abdul Rahman, who is appealing a U.S. immigration ruling to deport him, says he had nothing to do with the bombing.

Abouhalima arrived in Alexandria, Egypt, from Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, on March 11 using a U.S. passport, Mubarak said. He had not been to Egypt for 12 years.

On the day Abouhalima was returned to the United States, his attorney, Jesse Berman, said his client had been beaten and tortured while in custody in Egypt.

James M. Fox, chief of the FBI’s New York field office, said Abouhalima was examined by a doctor on his arrival, but Fox refused to reveal results of that examination.

In New York on Thursday, a federal judge set a tentative Sept. 14 trial date for the key defendants accused of the bombing, giving prosecutors more time to pull together evidence.

U.S. District Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy rejected motions by defense lawyers to hold the trial within the normal 60-day period required under federal law. He said that the case was extraordinary and that the government needed the additional time to examine evidence from the explosion.