NEW YORK — He is well known as the accused mastermind of an international terrorist network dedicated to thwarting American influence in the Middle East and ruthlessly killing to advance his cause.
But testimony in a heavily guarded federal courtroom last week also paints a surprising portrait of Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden as an organizational man beset with responsibilities ranging from real estate management to medical reimbursements.
According to the detailed accounts of Jamal Ahmed Al-Fadl, a former confidant of the Islamic extremist, running the militant group al-Qaeda (the Base) demands a broad range of skills befitting top executives of major corporations.
There are personnel files to maintain, with false names to keep sorted; diverse subsidiary businesses to run in a half-dozen countries; guest houses and farms to oversee; training exercises to organize and conduct; payrolls to meet; squabbles to settle; and hard feelings to deal with over pay and benefits.
In fact, it was over such mundane issues that al-Qaeda and Bin Laden may have suffered their most damaging breech of security.
Al-Fadl testified that it was a dispute over his own salary and festering envy over the higher pay to Egyptian terrorists that prompted him to siphon $110,000 from al-Qaeda accounts for personal investments--a transgression that led to a harsh rebuke from Bin Laden and which drove Al-Fadl into an interrogation room with eager U.S. intelligence agents.
Those sessions have provided Western counter-terrorist agents with a wealth of inside information that only now is being revealed in the trial of four men accused in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. Those blasts in Kenya and Tanzania killed 224 people and injured 4,500 others.
Testifying under extraordinary security in a courthouse freshly ringed by steel barriers, Al-Fadl told the jury of six men and six women about al-Qaeda's headquarters in Khartoum. He said Bin Laden moved his operation to the Sudanese capital at the end of 1990 to be closer to the Arab world after years of operating out of Afghanistan during its war against Soviet occupation.
Empire Directed From Offices in Khartoum
Al-Qaeda opened offices on McNimr Street in Khartoum, complete with a receptionist's area just inside the front door.
