16 April: Surrounded by unprecedented security, the defense is due to begin today in the high-stakes trial of four associates of the Saudi billionaire-terrorist Osama Bin Laden before the US District Court of New York. Cuffed and shackled, the four Moslem defendants will hear their lawyers mount a challenge to the weighty 300-count indictment of a global Islamic terrorist conspiracy dating from 1989 to kill US military personnel and civilians. The federal prosecutors rested their case a week ago after two months of hearings, in which 80 witnesses and 100 exhibits were produced to prove the defendantsâ?? direct participation in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzanya, causing 224 deaths, including 12 Americans. Eleven FBI agents testified on their three-year, multimillion-dollar investigation of the simultaneous bombings, as a results of which 22 men were indicted, most of them fugitives, including their mastermind, wealthy Saudi exile Osama Bin Laden, who lives in Afghanistan under Taleban protection with a $5 m FBI prize on his head. The defendants in the dock are Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-â?~Owhali, 24, a Saudi Arabian, who allegedly rode in the truck used in the Nairobi bombing, jumped out at the embassy gate and was seen tossing grenades at the military guard immediately prior to the explosion in the building; Al-â?~Owhali told interrogators the embassy was targeted because the ambassador was a woman whose death would attract more publicity than a man. The ambassador, Prudence Bushnell survived. Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 27, a Tanzanian is the alleged bomb-maker in the Dar es Salaam blast. If convicted, those two could face the death penalty, the first in the US for terrorist acts committed overseas. The other defendants, Wadih El-Hage, 40, a naturalized US citizen born in Lebanon and Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, 26, a Jordanian, face life imprisonment. These defendants come nowhere representing the full scope of Bin Ladenâ??s Islamic conspiracy against America, or even a full list of conspirators. Nonetheless, the trial is named US vs. Bin Laden, because the capture in 1998 of one of Bin Ladenâ??s principal lieutenants, Egyptian-born Ali Mohamed, 48, enabled the US government to use the trial for building a comprehensive indictment against the entire Bin Laden terrorist machine, Al Qaeda, with all its tentacles, proxies and jihadic aspirations. As the chief instructor of young Al Qaeda recruits, he is believed to be the author of an amazing document called Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants, seized in Manchester, England, at the home of one of the missing suspects and placed in evidence. The text is mainly a series of lessons on the specifics of a successful terrorist strike: explosives are termed the safest weapon because they strike terror in the enemy and allow Islamic warriors to escape; trainees are instructed in killing with knives, ropes, blunt objects and spraying lethal chemicals, how to conduct advance surveillance against a target; permission to torture hostages. â??Islamic warriors are taught how to lie low in Western cultures and even forgo Muslim appearance and prayers the better to blend into a foreign society. This manual shows how systematic and deep are Bin Ladenâ??s methods for not only terrorizing, but also invading the Western society he has targeted. Mohamed was also a skilled double agent. He became a naturalized US citizen and was able to penetrate the US army as a sergeant at the Fort Bragg, N.C. Special Forces facility. While facing a maximum life imprisonment for his role in the conspiracy and the East African embassy bombings, Mohamed, the first to plead guilty of the charges, may expect substantial credit for his cooperation with the US investigation as part of a plea bargain struck in October 2000. By laying bare Al Qaedaâ??s international workings, he gave the prosecution its overall conspiracy case against the defendants. They were accused of membership of an â??international terrorist groupâ?? dedicated to â??opposing non-Islamic governments with force and violenceâ??, with the goal of driving US armed forces out of Saudi Arabia and Somalia. Bin Laden himself was charged in absentia with endorsing a fatwah, or religious decree, ordering devout Muslims to kill Americans, including civilians, anywhere in the world. After the prosecution rested its case, the US district judge Leonard Sand, dismissed the Tanzania bombing counts against Odeh and al-Owhali, but retained the key charges of complicity in the overall plot to kill Americans and of links to Bin Laden. March 22, Mohamed Suleiman al-Nalfi, a Sudanese, was charged in the same court with forming and leading a Sudanese jihad group following Al Qaeda principles and helping Bin Laden start an investment business in Sudan in 1991 when his headquarters were relocated from Afghanistan to Khartoum. Additional defendants await separate trials in New York, including Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who attacked a prison guard last year. Three others are in extradition proceedings in Britain, including Khaled al-Fawwaz, who is alleged to have set up an information office in London in 1994 as cover for Al Qaedaâ??s military activities. Still sought is Ayman al-Zawahiri Zawahiri, described as leader of the al-Jihad in Egypt and member of the al-Qaeda leadership. This Manhattan courtroom is very familiar to Bin Ladenâ??s associates. It saw the convictions of six people for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and 10 others for their roles in a failed plot to blow up 10 New York landmarks, including the UN tower.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2001 and is filed under news.