NEW YORK, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- Quartet of Bin Laden bombers sentenced
By RICHARD SALE, Terrorism Correspondent
Four operatives of Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden today received life sentences without parole for their roles in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. Embassies in East Africa that killed 224 and wounded 4,600, including 12 Americans.
U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand imposed the sentences.
Mohamad Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali, a 24-year-old Saudi, was sentenced for driving a truck bomb to the U.S. Embassy in Kenya. 'Owhali, who had been trained in kidnapping and bomb-making operations in bin Laden terrorist camps in Afghanistan, was activated for the plot to kill Americans in early 1998, according to court documents. He drove the truck carrying the 1,800-pound bomb in a pick-up truck to the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi where he threw stun grenades at guards before he fled on foot.
Another operative, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 28, of Tanzania, was sentenced for grinding high explosives for the bomb and helping load the bomb aboard a refrigerator truck that exploded at the U.S. Embassy at Dar-es-Salaam.
Mohamad, through his attorney, thanked the jury for having spared his life but declined to address the court.
Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, 36, of Jordan, was sentenced for his role as chief of the Nairobi terrorist cell. He posed as a Mobassa fisherman while masterminding the plot.
According to court documents, by 1997, Kenya had become a key financial conduit for funding the various cells of the growing bin Laden network in Western Europe and the United States. The bin Laden network was also using Kenya as a transit point for huge amounts of drugs coming in from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Most important, it as a key "insertion" point for bin Laden terrorists with strike missions in Western Europe or America.
When joint Kenyan-Egyptian-American counterintelligence operations proved a dire threat to the network, bin Laden plotted to rid the area of Americans, to punish the United States for its activities in the region.
All four men were convicted last May for the part they played in the bombings but escaped the death penalty when the jury deadlocked 10-2 over whether they should be executed. Because of the deadlock, Judge Sand was required by federal law to impose life sentences.
The last to be sentenced, the lone U.S. citizen involved in the attacks, was Wadih El-Hage, 42, a Lebanese-born American from Arlington, Texas, who had once served as bin Laden's personal secretary in Khartoum in the early 1980s, according to U.S. intelligence sources. He was first exposed as a bin Laden operative in August 1997 when a joint force of Kenyan security and FBI forces raided his home in Kenya. El-Hage was then withdrawn by bin Laden and replaced by more aggressive terrorist commanders, U.S. officials said.
El-Hage was convicted last May of having set up "front" business for bin Laden in Sudan in 1991. He was also found guilty of lying to a federal grand jury probing bin Laden operations.
The scene around the Manhattan courthouse at 500 Pearl Street was bristling with barricades, and marshals armed with shotguns and automatic weapons. Acess to the building was roped off, and anyone entering the courthouse, including press, were thoroughly checked and belongings looked through.
The court where the men were sentenced stands only 500 yards from the site of the World Trade Towers that were destroyed Sept. 11 by bin Laden suicide airline hijackers.
