United States Embassies Tanzania

U.S. and Tanzanian officials broke ground Saturday for a new American Embassy, a year to the day after a powerful explosion ripped through the previous building, killing 11 people and injuring dozens. Investigators believe that the explosion was caused by a bomb planted by Islamic militants inside a refrigeration truck. The truck was parked outside the embassy compound in a residential neighborhood in the capital, Dar es Salaam.

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.

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.

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.

Elijah Ngito Owino, who worked as a payroll clerk in one of the buildings in downtown Nairobi destroyed by a terrorist bomb, is missing. Two months ago, his wife, Zena Ngito, died of malaria. Their two children, Calvin Biko, 9, and Michelle Ngito, 8, understand that their mom is gone. But they keep asking, "Where's Daddy?" Ten days after bombs aimed at U.S.

Several suspects were detained Wednesday in connection with the bombing of the U.S. Embassy here, even as rescue crews ended a round-the-clock search for survivors after unearthing the body of "Rose"--a Kenyan who had become a symbol of hope for this grief-stricken nation.

A former Army sergeant accused of conspiring with terrorists to murder Americans helped move Osama bin Laden from Pakistan to Sudan and trained members of his terrorist organization, according to newly unsealed court documents. The FBI complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan suggested there was a close relationship between Ali Mohamed, 46, a native of Egypt, and Bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the Aug. 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The two U.S. embassies in Africa that were shattered by terrorist bombs in August were vulnerable to attack because of decades of inattention to security, a senior administration official said Thursday, summarizing the findings of an official review board. The board said many U.S. diplomatic missions around the world have similar deficiencies and are tempting targets for terrorists.

When looking for clues about a big bomb blast, the rule of thumb is think small. Very small. "We are taking it one shovel at a time," said an FBI investigator, skirting between the U.S. Embassy here and a mound of debris across the street. "Everything has to be scrutinized." The U.S. investigation into the bomb blast in Kenya, in its first day of hands-on work Monday, is being played out in minute detail on the vast grounds of the Kenyan national railway headquarters.

U.S. investigators are heading to Pakistan to question a man who was reported to have confessed to bombing two American embassies in East Africa, U.S. authorities said Saturday. Meanwhile, a guard at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, identified a photograph shown to him by the FBI as someone he had seen at the bombing, a U.S. official said.

The twin bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed 224 people were part of a plot by Islamic extremist Osama bin Laden to murder Americans throughout the world, a prosecutor charged Monday in an opening statement at the trial of four alleged terrorists. The lawyer for one of the defendants confirmed that his client helped grind the powerful explosive used in the attack on the U.S.

A federal judge on Monday reversed himself and ruled that jurors can be shown an alleged confession by a defendant charged with participating in the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 that killed 224 people. The decision by Judge Leonard B. Sand in U.S.

A Saudi on trial in the deadly 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa asked a judge in a closed hearing in New York to throw out his confession, arguing in court papers that American interrogators threatened to hang him "like a dog" if he did not cooperate. Federal prosecutors say Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali admitted hurling a stun grenade at a guard outside the embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, just before a bomb exploded, killing more than 200 people.

Four alleged followers of Islamic extremist Osama bin Laden go on trial today for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, amid massive security and restrictions so tight that jury selection will be closed to the public. The attacks in Nairobi, Kenya, and in the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam left 224 people dead, including 12 Americans. More than 4,500 others were injured.

A composite sketch of one of two suspected suicide bombers appears to match that of a man wanted for questioning in connection with the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, a Yemeni source close to the U.S. warship Cole investigation said Thursday. The suspect's name was not given. A senior U.S. law enforcement official in the United States declined to comment on the reported resemblance.

Two men charged with conspiring to bomb two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 attacked and critically stabbed a guard in the eye at the Manhattan federal jail Wednesday, federal officials said. The two who are believed to have participated in the attack were identified as Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 27, a Tanzanian national, and Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, 40, a Sudanese national, said a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition he not be named.

A composite sketch of one of two suspected suicide bombers appears to match that of a man wanted for questioning in connection with the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, a Yemeni source close to the U.S. warship Cole investigation said Thursday. The suspect's name was not given. A senior U.S. law enforcement official in the United States declined to comment on the reported resemblance.

A former U.S. Army sergeant charged in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa pleaded guilty Friday and said Saudi militant Osama bin Laden examined a photograph of the embassy in Kenya and pointed to the spot where a truck bomb could do the most damage. Ali Mohamed, a 48-year-old Egyptian-born U.S. citizen, told the court that in late 1993, four years after leaving the military, he was asked by Bin Laden to conduct surveillance of U.S.

A former U.S. Army sergeant charged in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa pleaded guilty Friday and said Saudi militant Osama bin Laden examined a photograph of the embassy in Kenya and pointed to the spot where a truck bomb could do the most damage. Ali Mohamed, a 48-year-old Egyptian-born U.S. citizen, told the court that in late 1993, four years after leaving the military, he was asked by Bin Laden to conduct surveillance of U.S.

A British court on Tuesday ordered the extradition of two Egyptians to the United States in connection with the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The United States wants Ibrahim Hussein Abdel Hadi Eidarous and Adel Mohammed Abdul Almagid Bary to face murder conspiracy charges in connection with the August 1998 attacks that killed 213 people in Nairobi and 11 in Dar es Salaam.