2 Jailed in Embassy Bombings Are Accused of Stabbing Guard

Two men charged with conspiring to bomb two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 attacked and critically stabbed a guard in the eye at the Manhattan federal jail Wednesday, federal officials said.

The two who are believed to have participated in the attack were identified as Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 27, a Tanzanian national, and Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, 40, a Sudanese national, said a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition he not be named. The official said the attack occurred in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan.

The two are part of a group of five defendants facing trial in January in connection with the near-simultaneous bombings of the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, on Aug. 7, 1998.

The bombings killed more than 224 people, including 12 Americans, and injured hundreds more.

Both men are charged with being part of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization al Qaeda. Mohamed is charged with renting the Suzuki Samurai used in the Tanzania bombing, as well as obtaining a safe house there. Salim is an alleged lieutenant of Bin Laden’s. Both men have denied the charges. They could face the death penalty if convicted.

The source said the two were roommates in a cell at the high-security wing of the federal jail. A sharpened plastic object penetrated the eye and reached the brain of the federal corrections officer, the source said. The officer’s name was not released.

Five defendants charged in the case are housed at the center. Eight others are fugitives, including Bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire charged with masterminding the bombing plot. Three other defendants are in Europe awaiting extradition.

Another official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the defendants are usually kept in solitary confinement but the two are routinely rotated into the double cell. This was Salim and Mohamed’s turn to share the cell, the official said.

Some initial reports placed the guard in a coma, but Scott Wolfson, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, would say only that the guard was in critical condition and declined to elaborate.