In the trial that opened February 5 in Federal District Court in Manhattan, two men are charged with directly assisting the bombings, and the other two defendants are accused of involvement in a "global plot" that "aims to kill Americans anywhere in the world," according to an article in the New York Times. The bombings killed 224 people, including 12 U.S. citizens.

"The need for extra vigilance [in the trial] should not be underestimated," warned the editors of the Times, "given the brutal nature of the crimes and the breadth of the conspiracy outlined by the government." Armed federal marshals have occupied streets around the New York courthouse. Reinforcing metal posts surround the front, supposedly as a shield against potential "suicide drivers."

The trial is based on a more than 100-page indictment and is expected to last more than nine months.

The prosecution's first witness, Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, a U.S.-government informant since 1996, said he belonged to a "militant Islamic organization" supposedly headed by Saudi businessman Osama bin Laden. Al-Fadl testified that he took an oath of allegiance when he joined the group sometime around 1990 but later broke with bin Laden in 1996 after he was caught stealing $110,000 from him. Al-Fadl approached officials at a U.S. embassy later that year, trading his "evidence" for protection in the U.S. federal witness protection program. Al-Fadl's testimony said nothing about the blasts at the U.S. embassies nor the actions of the defendants.

Five days after the explosions at the U.S. embassies, FBI agents accompanied by Kenyan cops snatched Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali out of a hotel in a village outside Nairobi. Owhali was taken to the Kenyan Criminal Investigation Department where, after being interrogated for two weeks by the FBI agents and Kenyan authorities, he confessed to the bombing.  
 
No Miranda rights for those abroad
But before the trial opened, defense lawyers for three of the four defendants asked the judge to throw out confessions extracted from their clients. Owhali said that during the interrogation one cop threatened to harm his family and he was told by U.S. agents that if he demanded a lawyer he would be left in the hands of the Kenyans where "you will be hanged from your neck like a dog." Owhali said he feared Kenyan officials would torture or kill him.

Attorneys for Owhali and another defendant, Mohamed Saddiq Odeh, said their clients were threatened by U.S. officials during interrogation and said the agents never informed the men of their right to a lawyer. Owhali said when he asked for a lawyer before being put into a police lineup he was told by a FBI agent that "because I had no money, I could not have a lawyer."

One of the agents reportedly told him in Kenya, "Because we are not in the United States, we cannot ensure that you will have a lawyer appointed for you before any questioning." All of the accused were questioned overseas before being brought to the United States for trial.

U.S. government officials maintain that while they led the interrogation of Owhali in Nairobi, he was under the custody of Kenyan officials when they forced him to confess, and that he had no right to an attorney under Kenyan law. Owhali's lawyers said the lead prosecutor in the case, Patrick Fitzgerald, was a participant in the questioning of Owhali in Kenya and he was therefore in U.S. custody. Thus he should have been entitled to the same constitutional protections that he would have had in the United States.

Judge Leonard Sand of the Federal District Court in Manhattan initially ruled to suppress Owhali's coerced statements as evidence, but reversed his decision after prosecutors pressed him to allow them to be used in the trial. Sand decided that although the defendant's testimony was believable, while "classic Miranda doctrine" is supposed to ensure that a defendant is advised of the right to counsel before being questioned and given a lawyer if they cannot afford one, that may not always be feasible when U.S. government officials interrogate someone in another country.

While all the defendants pled not guilty of the charges, the lawyer for Khalfan Khamis Mohamed said his client was involved in making the bomb that exploded at the U.S. embassy in Tanzania but did not know what it was to be used for. The four men are among 21 who have been indicted in the allegedly terrorist conspiracy. Three have been detained in Britain, 13 are at large, and one will be tried separately, the Washington Post reported February 6.

Washington and the big business media has been waging a propaganda campaign to obtain convictions of the defendants. Three weeks before the trial opened the New York Times ran a three-part series on "Islamic militants" who are allegedly taught terrorism to wage "holy war." The article contained maps supposedly depicting terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, including several run by bin Laden where it claimed 5,000 recruits have been trained. "If the international terrorism that has haunted Americans for the last decade has a home, it is Afghanistan, the place that comes closest to the extremists' ideal of a state ruled by the strict code of Islamic law," wrote Judith Miller for the Times.

"The role of Afghanistan is now absolutely clear," declared Michael Sheehan, former coordinator of the State Department's Office of Counterterrorism. "Every Islamic militant we've looked at goes scurrying back there for sanctuary."

Two weeks after the explosions in 1998, the Clinton administration ordered an unannounced military attack on the Sudan and Afghanistan. U.S. warplanes launched 79 cruise missiles on Khartoum, the capital of Sudan and several sites in Afghanistan. The White House claimed those bombings were in "self-defense" against an "international terrorist network" allegedly organized by bin Laden who is reportedly living in Afghanistan.

The target in the Sudan, claimed with utmost authority by Washington at the time to be a terrorist chemical weapons factory, was later proved to be a plant used to produce medical drugs.
 
 
Related articles:
Trial turns victims into criminals
Canadian gov't widens Air India frame-up  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home