2nd Bin Laden Defector Tells of Targeting Bomb Sites

A second defector from Islamic militant Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization testified Wednesday that the group identified potential targets in Nairobi, Kenya, as early as four years before a massive bomb exploded at the American embassy in that African city.

L’Houssaine Kherchtou, 36, pointed out in the courtroom two of the four defendants charged with bombing U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people in 1998.

Kherchtou said that Wadih El-Hage, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, was his superior in Kenya and rented the small villa where he stayed in Nairobi.

He said he participated with Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, a citizen of Jordan, in training camps run by Bin Laden in Afghanistan and that Odeh had traveled to Somalia on behalf of Bin Laden’s group al-Qaeda (the Base).

Kherchtou said that, at the end of 1994 or early in 1995, followers of Bin Laden visited the apartment he rented in Nairobi before moving into the villa. He said they had cameras and computers and put blankets over windows while they developed surveillance photographs.

“It was very obvious . . . all different targets,” Kherchtou said.

His testimony appeared to corroborate the guilty plea in October of Ali A. Mohamed, a former U.S. Army sergeant, who had been indicted on conspiracy charges in the bombings of the embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

When he changed his plea, Mohamed told the court that in late 1993 he was asked by Bin Laden to conduct surveillance of U.S., British, French and Israeli targets in Nairobi as part of a plan to retaliate against the Clinton administration for its involvement in Somalia.

Kherchtou said he was sent to Kenya by al-Qaeda to train as a pilot and to assist other group members who were opposed to the presence of United Nations forces in Somalia.

“Some people in al-Qaeda were in Somalia,” he told the jury of six men and six women. “ . . . There were many people working in Somalia training people.”

Kherchtou said Bin Laden’s followers at one point plotted to help Somalians opposed to the United Nations’ presence who wanted to detonate explosives in a car at a U.N. compound.

“They didn’t succeed,” he said, providing no further details.

Kherchtou’s testimony underscored what has become clear during the trial: Several defectors from Bin Laden’s organization have provided Western intelligence agencies with significant information about the group’s operating methods and membership.

Jamal Ahmed Al-Fadl, a former confidant of Bin Laden and a founding member of al-Qaeda, testified previously that he warned U.S. authorities in 1996 that the group had discussed bombing the U.S. embassy in Riyadh city in Saudi Arabia.

That plan was shelved after Saudi members of al-Qaeda protested.

Kherchtou said that, while in Peshawar in northern Pakistan, he worked in an al-Qaeda electronics facility where remote detonators and timers for bombs were constructed. On the second floor of the building was an office where visas used by members of the group for travel were falsified.

Earlier Wednesday, the jury was shown a March 1997 CNN interview with Bin Laden during which he labeled the United States as “unjust, criminal and tyrannical.”

During the interview, the Saudi dissident called for a holy war to “drive the Americans away from all Muslim countries.”

Bin Laden denied any involvement in the bombing of the World Trade Center in February 1993 that killed six people and injured more than 1,000 in lower Manhattan.

But he warned, if the American government is “serious” about avoiding explosions inside the U.S., it should “stop provoking the feelings” of Muslims.

Bin Laden, who was indicted in the embassy bombings that wounded more than 4,500 people, many seriously, remains a fugitive and is believed to be living in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban regime. The U.S. government has offered a $5-million reward for information leading to his capture and is pressuring the Taliban to turn Bin Laden over to authorities.