Embassy bombing convictions upheld

NEW YORK - A federal appeals court upheld the convictions of three followers of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden for conspiracies that led to the 1998 US Embassy bombing in Kenya that killed 213 people.

A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled yesterday in New York. All three defendants were sentenced in October 2001 to life in prison.

"Our review of this complex and difficult case leaves us confident that defendants received a fair trial," Judge Jose A. Cabranes wrote in the unanimous decision.

Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali was found to have driven a truck bomb to the US Embassy in Nairobi on Aug. 7, 1998.

Mohamed Sadeek Odeh planned the Kenya blast, prosecutors said, and Wadih el-Hage was head of Al Qaeda in Nairobi and left that country for the United States in September 1997, before the bombings occurred.

The appeals judges sent Hage's life sentence back to the trial court for reconsideration, agreeing with his argument that the guidelines it was made under should have been viewed as advisory rather than mandatory. They rejected his argument that the calculation of the sentence contained errors.

"He was convicted of the conspiracy, not the bombing," one of Hage's lawyers, Joshua L. Dratel of New York, said in a phone interview. "The government never alleged he had knowledge of the bombings."

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