Pakistan Hands Over Bombing Suspect to Kenya

A Pakistani official here said Sunday that an “Arab national” has confessed to being involved in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in this capital and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and has been turned over to Kenyan authorities.

Fearing a possible violent public reaction against Pakistan’s cooperation with the U.S. in the case, Americans gathered at the embassy in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Sunday to await instructions about a possible evacuation. Later, in Washington, the State Department ordered the departure from that country of all nonessential embassy workers and warned Americans against traveling there.

Pakistani authorities arrested the bombing suspect, identified as Mohammed Sadik Howaida, in the Pakistani city of Karachi on the day--and about the same time--of the twin bombings, according to senior U.S. officials. The Pakistanis interrogated him for several days before transporting him to Nairobi, Malik Mohammed Ashraf, Pakistan’s press attache in the Kenyan capital, said Sunday.

“The suspect was interrogated by our concerned agencies, and on satisfaction about his involvement in these terrorist acts he was sent back to Nairobi and handed over to the Kenyan authorities for appropriate action under their law,” Ashraf said in a statement prepared by the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad.

In an interview, Ashraf told The Times that Howaida had confessed to involvement in both bombings and was brought to Nairobi on Friday. He referred all further questions to Kenyan authorities, who declined to comment.

Howaida’s nationality is believed to be Egyptian, Palestinian, Saudi or a combination of one or more of the three, according to the senior U.S. officials.

The officials, who eventually expect to take custody of him from the Kenyans if his story is corroborated, don’t consider him the mastermind of the Aug. 7 double bombings that occurred within minutes of each other. But they say he may be a key to unraveling the dual attacks that killed more than 250 people. Ten of the fatalities were in Dar es Salaam.

Pakistani officials described Howaida as a “very important” suspect, according to the U.S. officials.

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American officials said they decided to evacuate the dependents of official staff members, as well as nonemergency personnel, at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad and the three U.S. consulates in Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar. Karachi was the site in November of the terrorist slaying of four American oil industry workers and one Pakistani. No one has been arrested in that case.

“We took the decision based on very serious indications of a threat to U.S. facilities and U.S. citizens,” State Department spokesman Richard Hoagland said.

Meanwhile, investigators have reportedly gotten another potentially key break in the case: the location of a crucial piece of the Mitsubishi truck believed to have been used in the Nairobi bombing. Newsweek magazine reported Sunday that the piece, a 100-pound steel drive shaft, was propelled more than half a mile by the blast and contains identifying serial numbers.

FBI authorities would not comment on the latest developments. But sources told The Times that the Pakistanis did not tell U.S. authorities until the end of last week about the arrest of Howaida. Nor would they turn him over to the United States.

Pakistan and the United States have cooperated closely on solving previous terrorist cases, and, in the statement issued by the Pakistani Foreign Ministry on Sunday, the Pakistanis reiterated their opposition to “terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.”

But it is believed that Pakistani officials bypassed the U.S. in this case because they did not want a repeat of the public clamor that followed the FBI’s involvement with Pakistani authorities in the arrest of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the World Trade Center bomber.

And when FBI and Pakistani authorities arrested Mir Aimal Kasi in June 1997 in the killing of two CIA employees, angry Pakistanis accused their government of groveling before U.S. power. Kasi was later convicted and sentenced to death.

In hopes of avoiding a repeat of those problems, the Pakistanis have been dealing with Howaida through a third party, the Kenyans. They flew the suspect to Nairobi on a Pakistani aircraft while American investigators followed separately behind. After his arrival here, however, the U.S. and Kenya joined in interrogating him.

Authorities in Karachi arrested Howaida as he was trying to catch a flight to Afghanistan after they saw that he did not match the picture on his passport, according to Pakistani media reports. They arrested him after he tried to bribe his way past passport control officials, making his capture potentially one of the luckiest breaks in a terrorist investigation since Timothy J. McVeigh was stopped for not having license plates on his car after the Oklahoma City bombing, the U.S. officials said.

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Two other suspects had already gone through Pakistan into Afghanistan, according to the U.S. officials--who said Howaida is considered the most important of the three, although they did not explain why.

His effort to sneak into Afghanistan is significant because that is the base of operations for Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi financier who is considered a prime suspect in the case. Pakistan also is the primary transit route for Arabs who are part of Bin Laden’s terrorist network.

Bin Laden is believed to be a financial supporter of the Islamic Jihad, whose agents are linked to the 1995 attempt in Ethiopia on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s life.

But U.S. officials say they have other evidence, unrelated to the arrest of Howaida, that implicates Bin Laden. They think Howaida’s arrest could bring them an important step closer to identifying who carried out the bombings, but the officials said his capture was not the main reason their suspicions are focused on the Saudi dissident.

“It’s pointing more and more at Bin Laden and his apparatus,” a senior Clinton administration official said.

U.S. officials say that Howaida’s story still has to be thoroughly investigated and that they expect Howaida to throw them a lot of ringers before the real version of events can be verified. If the evidence of Howaida’s involvement proves true, U.S. officials expect the Kenyans to turn him over to the U.S. for trial.

Wright reported from Washington and Berry from Nairobi. Staff writers Dexter Filkins in Islamabad and Dean E. Murphy in Nairobi also contributed to this story.