U.S. to Question Blast Suspect Detained by Pakistan

U.S. investigators are heading to Pakistan to question a man who was reported to have confessed to bombing two American embassies in East Africa, U.S. authorities said Saturday.

Meanwhile, a guard at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, identified a photograph shown to him by the FBI as someone he had seen at the bombing, a U.S. official said. The official would not identify the person in the photograph, but Knight Ridder News Service said he was an associate of millionaire Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, an avowed foe of the United States who has urged his followers to wage holy war on Americans in Saudi Arabia and U.S. targets elsewhere.

Reacting to the reported confession, the CIA made arrangements late Friday for agents to question the man, who was being held by Pakistani authorities, according to a U.S. law enforcement official in Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity.

An FBI legal attache permanently assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, also was believed to be looking into possible connections between the suspect in custody and the East Africa bombings, the source said.

The suspect, identified as 32-year-old Mohammed Sadique, was detained as he tried to slip out of Pakistan into Afghanistan, the Pakistan newspaper The News reported today. The paper quoted unidentified government officials as saying Sadique confessed to planning the Aug. 7 bombings at the embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The nearly simultaneous attacks killed more than 250 people, including 12 Americans in the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.

The Pakistani newspaper did not report whether Sadique was linked to Bin Laden or whether he offered a motive. But the paper said he received help in Kenya from sympathizers with connections to the Islamic Jihad organization in Egypt.

The embassy in Islamabad and the State Department and FBI in Washington would not comment on the reported suspect. Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman Tariq Altaf said he had no knowledge of the case, as did Pakistani intelligence sources.

The News reported that Sadique was detained Aug. 7 at the Karachi airport by immigration officials because he didn’t match his passport photograph. He was arrested after trying to bribe the officials, the paper said.

Sadique reportedly confessed to the bombings under interrogation and said two conspirators had left Nairobi and entered Afghanistan a few days earlier.