Bombing Survivors Give Gripping Testimony

Some badly scarred, others blinded, all still shaken, a parade of survivors on Wednesday relived the horror of the 1998 bombing that devastated the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.

The stories of death and heroism provided the most gut-wrenching testimony so far at the trial of four alleged followers of Islamic militant Osama bin Laden charged with conspiring to attack two U.S. embassies in Africa.

Jurors sat grim-faced, and one had tears in her eyes, when a prosecutor in the Manhattan courtroom read aloud the names and ages of the 213 people killed in the attack in Nairobi.

Samuel Nganga, a 53-year-old scrap metal dealer, said he was buried under rubble with a broken leg for two days before he was saved. “I kept on banging the walls until the rescuers knew where I was,” he said.

During his ordeal, Nganga said, he sometimes talked to a woman who also was trapped. “Unfortunately, she was not saved,” he added.

Frank Pressley, 48, an embassy employee, said that the huge explosion sent him flying through the air. He hit a wall before crashing to the floor.

“I looked up at the ceiling. . . . The ceiling was gone,” he told the jurors, who listened intently.

Pressley said he groped his way through smoke and past bloody walls and bodies until he was out of the embassy. He said that the blast had blown away half his jaw and that his shoulder was badly injured.

“I looked down and saw bones sticking out of my shirt,” Pressley said.

At first, he thought that the building’s boiler had blown up. But once on the street, Pressley stood in front of the embassy and watched others stagger out.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he said.

He said his wife, who also worked in the building, finally emerged and looked at him wide-eyed. “I didn’t realize how bad I was,” Pressley added.

George Mimba, 35, the embassy’s information systems manager, testified that he heard a small explosion followed by the huge blast.

“I didn’t know where I was. The ceiling came down on me,” he said. “. . . The smoke choked me. I could not see anything. I heard people cry.”

As he crawled toward a window, Mimba said, he recognized the voices of colleagues. In the darkness, he felt dead bodies.

“I could not open my eyes. I said, ‘Lord, please take my soul.’ ” Mimba said he reached for his identification card so people could identify his corpse.

After reaching a window, Mimba said, he jumped out and landed on a metal stand in the embassy’s garden, further injuring himself.

“I was unconscious for some time,” Mimba said. But when he finally opened his eyes, “I could see I did not die.”

Mimba said he managed to climb a fence and reach the street. He saw a school bus that was shattered. Everyone on the bus was dead.

Later, he returned to the embassy, looking for co-workers. He said he heard a woman cry: “George, George, please help me.”

Mimba said he pulled a body to safety, thinking it was the woman. It was a man.

He told the jury that to this day, he does not know if the woman who called out his name made it out of the embassy alive.

“It’s been haunting me,” he said. “I really want to know if she survived.”

John Kiongo, a Catholic priest, said that he had gone to the embassy that morning, Aug. 7, to see his brother--who worked in the shipping department--and his niece, who was planning to study in America.

Kiongo testified that he managed to say a prayer.

“Everything fell down. . . . My brother and niece died,” he said.

Marine Sgt. Daniel Briehl, who was off duty, had traveled to the embassy with two other Marines. One went in to cash a check.

Briehl testified that he was in front of the building when the bomb exploded. He ran into the embassy and shouted at a Marine who was stationed in an enclosed guard post.

There was no answer.

Later, he plunged two floors down an open elevator shaft, hurting his back. “I told myself I had to get up,” he said.

Briehl said he managed to get out by prying open a door in the shaft.

“I found some people in the building. I helped them get out,” he said.

Later, he learned both the Marine on duty in the guard post and his friend who went to cash the check were killed.

Pinanah Muhoho, a resident of Nairobi, had to be helped by court personnel to the witness stand.

In a soft voice, she said that she had lived in Kenya her entire life and had been riding a bus that stopped near the embassy that day. She said a pickup truck approached the building, and then someone got out of the truck and held something with both hands. There was a lot of noise, followed by a huge explosion.

It was the last sight she ever saw.

“I touched my mouth and I found I had no teeth,” she said. “I asked for help.”

Muhoho said she heard other people crying and eventually was pulled from the bus.

“I lost my eyes,” she said.

Dr. Gretchen McCoy, the embassy’s medical officer, was in her basement office when the blast occurred. The lights immediately went out. She, two nurses and a nurse practitioner grabbed the emergency treatment bag containing medical supplies and crawled over furniture in the waiting room.

They helped some people who had been in the office for appointments get out of the building, then returned.

She said she saw the decapitated body of a woman.

Later, on the third floor, she found a colleague who had chest pain. With the help of others, McCoy carried the woman on a makeshift stretcher--a door--down a staircase to safety.

Then she went to a hospital in Nairobi to see if the wounded were receiving proper attention.

“It was utter chaos,” she said.

After those who survived the bombing had testified, FBI agent Stephen Gaudin took the stand. He said that Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-’Owhali, 23--one of two defendants who face the death penalty if convicted--told him that he had arrived in Nairobi in August.

Al-’Owhali, who was seized following the bombing by police in Kenya, told Gaudin that he was briefed by other members of the terrorist cell about what the mission would be.

The FBI agent said al-’Owhali was instructed to ride in the truck containing the bomb, use a pistol to get a guard to open a barrier so the truck could drive as close to the embassy as possible and then throw stun grenades to scatter people out of the area.