A wide plot to kill Americans alleged in embassy bomb trial
Joe Lauria, Globe Correspondent, 02/06/2001
 EW YORK -- The trial of the United States v. Osama bin Laden opened yesterday with a federal prosecutor accusing alleged members of bin Laden's terror gang of staging the deadly 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa as part of a conspiracy to "kill US nationals anywhere in the world."
Amid the tightest security ever at a federal trial in New York, the jury heard opening statements from the government and the defense before US District Judge Leonard Sand. The trial is expected to last up to a year.
Prosecutor Paul Butler told the jury that the defendants plotted with bin Laden to pull off the nearly simultaneous blasts at the embassies in Tanzania and Kenya on the morning of Aug. 7, 1998, killing 224 people, including 12 Americans.
"It was business as usual at the American Embassy," Butler said, "then, in the blink of an eye, everything changed."
The embassies and adjacent buildings were destroyed, Butler told the jury of six men and six women. "But what it did to human beings that day defies description. . . . Words and numbers cannot describe the horror."
As he detailed the charges against them, Butler pointed at the four defendants, who had been led into the courtroom shackled at their hands and feet. Dressed in white religious garb and skullcaps, the men twirled their beards while staring at the jurors.
Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali, 24, of Saudi Arabia, accused of riding in the bomb-laden truck in Nairobi, and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 27, of Tanzania, charged with doing the same in Dar es Salaam, face the death penalty. Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, 35, of Jordan, accused of setting up a fishing business in Kenya to support the operation, faces life in prison without parole.
Anthony Ricco, a defense lawyer for Odeh, admitted his client was in bin Laden's group but denied he was part of a conspiracy to kill Americans. Odeh, an "extremely devoted religious man," would not have agreed to violate Islamic laws to murder innocent people and children, Ricco said.
The fourth suspect on trial, Wadih El-Hage, 40, of Arlington, Texas, is charged with taking part in the conspiracy and with seven counts of perjury. Butler told the court that Hage, who faces life in prison, lied to the FBI and to a grand jury investigating the conspiracy.
In his opening statement, Hage lawyer Sam Schmidt acknowledged that his client was bin Laden's personal secretary but said that Hage believed he was working on legitimate businesses and charity. Hage is a "husband and father, a devout, caring person," Schmidt told the jury.
A fifth defendant, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, is to be tried separately on conspiracy charges and one count of attempted murder after he lunged at a prison guard with a sharpened comb in his Manhattan cell last November.
In all, 22 men were indicted in the bombings. Three await extradition from Britain, and 13 remain at large.
One man, Ali Mohammed, pleaded guilty and may be called as a government witness.
Among those at large is multimillionaire bin Laden, who remains in Afghanistan.
The trial continues today.
This story ran on page A11 of the Boston Globe on 02/06/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
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