Costly Foreign Trips of Bombing Plot Suspect Disclosed : Terrorism: Prosecutors describe recent travels to Egypt, Holland, Sudan and South America. The defendant is denied bail.

A principal suspect in the plot to bomb the United Nations and other prominent New York City targets recently traveled to Egypt, Holland, Sudan and South America, without visible means to pay for the trips and while working only at low-paying odd jobs, prosecutors in the case said Monday.

Officials disclosed the trips during a court session in which Fadil Abdelghani, 31, was ordered held without bail by U.S. Magistrate James C. Francis, who declared: “The evidence against this defendant is fairly strong.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Andrew McCarthy told the court that Abdelghani is shown on videotape actually mixing explosive chemicals and discussing targets with other defendants in the case. Through an informant, police and the FBI managed to plant both cameras and microphones in the Jamaica, Queens, garage that the alleged plotters used as a safehouse and a bomb factory.

“The weight of the evidence against Abdelghani is daunting,” the prosecutor charged.

“This was a crime that was set to send a signal to the American government and the West as a whole,” McCarthy said. “The nature and circumstances of (his) offense could not be more egregious.”

The prosecutor said that Abdelghani, who sat quietly in blue prison garb in court, earned only $200 a week when he worked--sporadically. Yet, McCarthy said, the defendant managed to pay for the trips.

“Somewhere, he has the wherewithal to travel,” he added. “There is evidence of risk of flight.”

The disclosure that at least one defendant in the latest plot went abroad with little money of his own raised questions about the sources of his funding, and whether the scheme to bomb the United Nations, two Hudson River tunnels and the federal building containing the offices of the FBI may have been financed abroad.

Investigators are still trying to trace the origins of overseas funds that were transferred into the New Jersey bank accounts of some of the suspects who were arrested in the World Trade Center bombing last February. Six people were killed and more than 1,000 injured in the attack on the twin towers.

Authorities have identified Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali, 32, as the alleged ringleader of the latest bombing plot. Court papers charge that Siddig and another current defendant were involved in preparations for the trade center attack as well. Siddig served as a translator for Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, the controversial Muslim cleric who was spiritual leader to several suspects in both the February bombing and the present plot.

McCarthy said that Abdelghani, who comes from a family of 12 children, has been in the United States for five years. He became a permanent resident in 1991 through marriage to an American woman, whose whereabouts are not known. The prosecutor added that Abdelghani also has a wife in Sudan.

About a dozen supporters of the defendant attended the bail hearing. They angrily declined comment in a third-floor hallway outside the courtroom.

Eight suspects have been arrested in the alleged plot to bomb targets in New York. In seeking to trace their activities, investigators over the weekend raided a camp in Bloomfield, Pa., that FBI agents believe was used as a training ground for some of those seized in the World Trade Center bombing.

FBI and U.S. Navy divers scoured a small pond on the 35-acre farm about 30 miles northwest of Harrisburg, Pa., searching for evidence, but authorities declined to say whether they found anything during the raid.