Ex-Army Sergeant Admits Guilt in ’98 Embassy Blasts

A former U.S. Army sergeant charged in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa pleaded guilty Friday and said Saudi militant Osama bin Laden examined a photograph of the embassy in Kenya and pointed to the spot where a truck bomb could do the most damage.

Ali Mohamed, a 48-year-old Egyptian-born U.S. citizen, told the court that in late 1993, four years after leaving the military, he was asked by Bin Laden to conduct surveillance of U.S., British, French and Israeli targets in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, as part of a plan to retaliate against the United States for its peacekeeping role in neighboring Somalia.

“I took pictures, drew diagrams and wrote a report,” Mohamed said, detailing how he later traveled to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, where Bin Laden and top advisors reviewed his “surveillance files.”

“Bin Laden looked at a picture of the American Embassy and pointed to where a truck could go as a suicide bomber,” Mohamed said.

On Aug. 7, 1998, massive explosions ripped though the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania, killing more than 220 people, including 12 Americans, and injuring more than 5,000.

Mohamed was the first person to plead guilty in the case, and his statement was a major victory for prosecutors who are preparing for the trial in January of the other five defendants in custody.

U.S. government lawyers are seeking to extradite three defendants from Britain, while eight others--including Bin Laden--remain fugitives. The Clinton administration has offered a $5-million reward for information leading to the capture of the Saudi millionaire, who is believed to be in Afghanistan.

Mohamed, balding and wearing a baggy, light blue prison uniform, entered the New York courtroom in leg shackles Friday to appear before U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand, who also will preside at the January trial.

The former Army sergeant, who went through basic training at Ft. Jackson, S.C., and spent the rest of his military career at Ft. Bragg, N.C., pleaded guilty to five federal counts of conspiracy, which included plotting to kill U.S. citizens, destroy U.S. facilities and murder U.S. soldiers in Somalia and Saudi Arabia.

Throughout the proceeding, his demeanor was calm and he spoke precisely as he outlined his relationship with Bin Laden’s organization and other suspected terrorist groups.

His plea contained a chilling playbook of carefully planned terrorist trade craft.

Mohamed told the court he became involved with Bin Laden in the early 1990s, later training the Saudi’s bodyguards and scouting locations in Africa for potential attacks.

He said that in the early 1980s, he was involved with the militant Islamic Jihad in Egypt, and through that group was introduced to al Qaeda, the organization headed by Bin Laden.

Mohamed said he helped transport Bin Laden from Afghanistan to Sudan in 1991, and the next year conducted military and basic explosives training for al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

“In the early 1990s, I assisted al Qaeda in creating a presence in Nairobi, Kenya,” he told the court, saying he worked on the project with Abu Ubaidah Banshiri, Bin Laden’s military commander, who drowned in a ferry accident in 1996.

“A car business was set up to create income,” he explained, along with a charity organization to provide members of al Qaeda with documents. “We used various code names to conceal our identities. I used the name Jeff.”

Among the potential targets in Nairobi that he scouted in 1993 for attacks were the U.S. Embassy, U.S. agricultural and aid offices, the French Embassy and the French Cultural Center.

He said Bin Laden sent him to the East African nation of Djibouti in 1994 on a surveillance mission of several facilities, including French military bases and the U.S. Embassy. The same year, after an attempt was made on Bin Laden’s life, he traveled to Sudan to train the militant leader’s bodyguards.

Mohamed told the court that he arranged security for a meeting in Sudan between Bin Laden and a leader of Hezbollah, a militant Lebanese Islamic organization.

“Hezbollah provided explosives training for al Qaeda and al Jihad,” he said. “Iran supplied Egyptian Jihad with weapons. Iran also used Hezbollah to supply explosives that were disguised to look like rocks.”

Mohamed said he returned to the United States in 1994 after receiving a phone call from an FBI agent asking to speak with him about the upcoming trial of Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind Egyptian sheik who was later found guilty of conspiring to blow up targets in New York, including the United Nations.

Mohamed said he spoke to the FBI, “but didn’t disclose everything that I knew,” and after reporting on his meeting to Bin Laden was told not to return to Nairobi. Later, he obtained a list of co-conspirators for the sheik’s trial and sent it to Kenya, expecting it would be forwarded to Bin Laden.

After the embassy bombings, he planned to travel to Egypt and later Afghanistan to meet with Bin Laden. Before he could depart, he was called before a federal grand jury in Manhattan investigating the twin terrorist attacks.

“I testified, told some lies, and was then arrested,” he said.

At the end of the plea, Judge Sand asked Mohamed what the goal of his activities was.

“The objective of all this, just to attack any Western target in the Middle East, to force the government of the Western countries just to pull out of the Middle East,” Mohamed said.

“And to achieve that objective, did the conspiracy include killing nationals of the United States?” Sand asked.

“Yes, sir,” the defendant answered.

The plea bargain concluded on-again, off-again negotiations between prosecutors and Mohamed, who was held for months at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.

According to military documents, Mohamed enlisted in the Army on Aug. 15, 1986, and served as an equipment, records and parts specialist. He left the military in 1989.

Given his Egyptian background, he was assigned as a guest speaker to the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Ft. Bragg, lecturing on the political, economic, cultural and religious aspects of the Middle East.

An Army spokeswoman said his record indicated no disciplinary problems.

After Mohamed pleaded guilty, Sand at first said the agreement with prosecutors assured a minimum sentence of 25 years. But after defense lawyers objected and a conference was held in the courtroom, Sand did not specify a prison term.

U.S. Atty. Mary Jo White, whose office has handled a series of terrorism cases stemming from the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, was in the courtroom during the proceeding. The trade center attack killed six people and injured more than 1,000.

White’s office has been designated to handle any criminal cases that stem from the Oct. 12 bombing of the U.S. guided missile destroyer Cole in Yemen, which left 17 sailors dead and 39 injured.

After Mohamed’s statement, some intelligence experts sought to put it in perspective.

“The plea moves information that resided in intelligence files into the public domain,” said Brian Jenkins, counter-terrorism consultant and senior advisor to the president of Rand Corp. in Santa Monica.

“Following the bombings of the American embassies in Africa, American officials were very quick to point the finger at Osama bin Laden--some said too quick,” Jenkins continued.

“This now provides justification after the fact for the supposition of the involvement of Bin Laden,” he said, adding that Mohamed’s statements also provide further reasons for the U.S. missile attacks on facilities linked to the Saudi militant in Afghanistan and Sudan after the embassy bombings.

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Times staff writers Paul Richter and Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.