Bombings Kenya

The U.S. Agency for International Development is seeking a new partner to distribute American aid to victims of a 1998 terrorist bombing here, after the failure of the current manager to adequately perform the task. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies will return most of a $3.5-million USAID grant that had been earmarked to provide counseling and educational support for Kenyans in the wake of the August 1998 attack on the U.S. Embassy.

Again stating that execution might turn a terrorist into a martyr, a federal court jury Tuesday spared the life of a second man convicted in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed 224 people. At the start of their third day of penalty-phase deliberations, the jurors announced that they could not reach agreement on whether Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, a 27-year-old native of Tanzania, should be executed.

A Tanzanian whose house allegedly was used as a bomb factory in last year's deadly attacks on two U.S. embassies in East Africa pleaded innocent to conspiracy charges. The suspect, Khalfan Khamis Mohammed, 26, could face the death penalty if convicted. He was arrested Thursday in Cape Town, South Africa, and flown to the U.S. for trial. Mohammed was named in an indictment stemming from the Aug. 7 bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.

A deeply divided jury Tuesday spared the life of a 24-year-old terrorist convicted of killing 213 people in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, sentencing him instead to life in prison without parole. In rejecting the death penalty for Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali, most of the jurors reasoned that execution would do little to alleviate the suffering of survivors and would make the killer a martyr for the terrorist organization run by Islamic militant Osama bin Laden.

Last week's terrorist attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa that seemed unlikely targets have prompted U.S. companies operating overseas to reassess their security precautions in cities not usually associated with terrorism, security experts said Monday. Fears of corporate vulnerability caused the phones to ring off the hooks Monday at international security consulting firms such as Kroll-O'Gara in New York and Wackenhut in Palm Beach, Fla.

In the early months of 1996, agents working in the windowless white cubbyholes of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center made a strategic decision. A joint CIA-FBI investigation into the misdeeds of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Ahmed Yousef had uncovered a treasure of unexpected data about someone the agents concluded was even more dangerous. His name was Osama bin Laden.

In the wake of any apparent terrorist attack, it's always the first question asked: "Who did it?" But amid the blood and debris of Friday's U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, there were depressingly few clues that might point to a culprit. Experts on East Africa came up empty in their initial search for possible suspects or motives within the region.

The U.S. government has spent more than $1 billion to turn about 20 of its embassies around the world into state-of-the-art anti-terrorist fortresses, designed to withstand mob violence and car bombs. The buildings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam are not among them. State Department officials said that, until Friday's deadly bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, neither country was on the department's list of high-danger posts.

Under a towering eucalyptus tree, Alice Nduta Gachiri's two daughters stood straight and tall Saturday as they remembered their mother as a "jolly, generous, sympathetic and welcoming person" whose life was abruptly ripped from her by a terrorist bomb.

The main lobby of CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., displays more than 70 stars honoring and mourning operatives who have lost their lives while on duty. Perhaps half the stars carry no names. This obsession with secrecy--refusing to identify some officers even after death--has powered the Central Intelligence Agency's persistent refusal this week to comment on news reports from Nairobi, Kenya, that one of the 12 Americans killed in the terrorist bombing there was a CIA agent.

A federal prosecutor urged jurors on Wednesday to impose the death penalty on a convicted terrorist who showed such "total lack of remorse" that he posed triumphantly for a photograph after participating in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, that killed 213 people.

A juror suffering dental pain caused deliberations to be cut short Wednesday in the case against four followers of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, charged with plotting to bomb U.S. embassies in Africa. The Manhattan federal jury received the case late May 10. The panel, which is not sequestered and has not met on weekends, is scheduled to resume deliberations today.

A federal jury in New York ended its third full day of deliberations in the case against four Osama bin Laden followers charged in a plot to kill Americans that included the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Bin Laden is believed to be the mastermind behind the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam bombings that killed 224 people. Before leaving for the day, jurors asked for evidence involving Ali Mohamed, a former U.S.

Jurors in New York weighing the cases of four men accused in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania concluded deliberations for the week after requesting to review more evidence. The jurors sent U.S.

The lawyer for a naturalized U.S. citizen charged in the bombing of two American embassies in East Africa told a jury Thursday his client served Islamic militant Osama bin Laden as a business advisor and not as a terrorist. "The government has taken dots that don't have numbers and connected it into a picture they want," defense attorney Sam A. Schmidt said in closing arguments on behalf of Wadih El-Hage. "Mr. El-Hage was working like a dog to make money for Bin Laden," Schmidt said.

A prosecutor charged Tuesday that four followers of Islamic extremist Osama bin Laden, on trial for conspiring to bomb two U.S. embassies in East Africa, participated in an "evil horror" that demands accountability. In his closing argument, Assistant U.S. Atty. Kenneth Karas labeled the terrorist attacks "unspeakable acts that ended the lives, the hopes and dreams of hundreds of people."

A coalition of extremist Islamic groups linked to a dissident Saudi millionaire has issued new threats against the United States, an Arabic newspaper reported Wednesday. In a statement sent to the Cairo bureau of the Pan-Arab daily Al Hayat, a group calling itself the International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders warned that recent "holy struggle operations" against the United States will continue "until all American forces retreat from the Islamic lands."

International rescue teams continued a painstaking search for survivors beneath hunks of collapsed concrete Saturday as the death toll from terrorist bombs outside the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania rose to at least 147, with more than 4,800 injured. Thirty-six hours into the search, an Israeli-led crew salvaged Kenya's floundering rescue effort and boosted the nation's spirits when they extracted a 45-year-old businessman from beneath the debris.

Federal prosecutors in New York ended their case against four followers of Osama bin Laden after two months of testimony aimed at proving the Saudi dissident headed a broad conspiracy to kill Americans. Prosecutors rested their case after reading into the record a communication from the London cell of Bin Laden's militant organization al Qaeda claiming responsibility for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Jurors in the U.S. embassy bombings trial viewed burned-out, crumpled chunks of a truck that hauled a bomb into the embassy compound in Kenya. Pieces of the Toyota were found after two embassies were bombed on Aug. 7, 1998. The attacks, in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killed 224 people. If convicted, Wadih El-Hage, 40, and Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, 36, could face life in prison while Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 27, could face the death penalty.