An allegedly former aide to Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden has told a court he warned US officials that its missions might come under attack, two years before the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, said BBC.online Thursday.
Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, testifying at the trial of four men charged in connection with the bombings, was quoted as saying he told US officials that Bin Laden’s group was trying to "make war" against the United States and would make bombs against "some embassy.”
Fadl told the New York court he decided to alert US officials after he was kicked out of bin Laden's organization for stealing.
Prosecutors say the 1998 blasts at US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, were part of a worldwide plot by bin Laden, who has been indicted for the crimes.
The bombings killed 224 people - 12 Americans, 201 Kenyans and 11 other Africans.
Four suspects are being tried for the attacks, and all pleaded not guilty. If convicted, Saudi national Mohamed Rashid Daoud Al Owhali, 23, and Tanzanian Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 27 -- could face the death penalty.
The remaining two -- Lebanese-American Wadi El Haj, 40, and Jordanian Mohamad Siddiq Odeh, 35 -- face life in prison.
One man suspected in the plot has pleaded guilty. Three others are in Britain awaiting extradition.
Meanwhile, Fadl said that bin Laden tried in the 1990s to buy uranium, possibly to make a weapon, reported AFP.
The defector said he had served as the intermediary in the transaction between bin Laden, then in Sudan, and a seller he identified only as "Bashir," who demanded 1.5 million dollars for a cylinder of uranium about one meter long.
Fadl added that he did not know if bin Laden successfully completed the purchase.
Prosecutors have called the 34-year-old Sudanese national, who defected from bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization and sought protection from the US government, to help bolster their case that bin Laden masterminded the near-simultaneous 1998 bombings.
According to the agency, US authorities have expressed numerous concerns over the past few years that a radical group was trying to obtain material to build a nuclear bomb. Al Fadl's testimony offered details of the effort by bin Laden, a sworn enemy of the United States.
Al Fadl said he was assigned to the effort by an al-Qaeda leader known by the pseudonym Abu Fadl al Makkee, while the organization was based in Khartoum from 1991 to 1996. He said he did not remember the exact date.
"Al Makkee told me: 'People in Khartoum have uranium. We need to buy that,' " Fadl said.
At a meeting in Bait al Man, a city north of Khartoum, al Fadl was able to examine the merchandise, he said.
"There were documents about the origin of it: South Africa, serial numbers and things about quality," al Fadl said. "The machine to test the cylinder would come from Kenya."
Sudanese officials denied on Tuesday that their country had had any link with the group, said Al Jazira satellite channel.
Bin Laden is one of 14 people charged in the bombings who remain at large. In Washington, CIA chief George Tenet said Wednesday that bin Laden represented the most serious threat to US security, said AFP.
"The threat from terrorism is real, it is immediate and it is evolving," Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"Osama bin Laden and his global network of lieutenants and associates remain the most immediate and serious threat."
Bin Laden is currently in Afghanistan, but the country's hard-line Islamic leaders have refused to hand him over, saying there is not enough evidence against him. The US has promised a five-million-dollar reward for information leading to his capture.
Last, Jordan and Lebanon have tried nationals charged with belonging to the dissident’s organization – Albawaba.com
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