US jury to decide fate of suspect in Nairobi embassy bombing

New York. US prosecutors on Thursday closed their case against a man they described as a founder of the Al-Qaeda cell that carried out the 1998 embassy bombing in Nairobi.

A 12-person jury will now weigh terrorism-related charges against Khalid al-Fawwaz, a 52-year-old Saudi, who, if convicted, could face life in prison.

The jurors have been presented during the month-long trial with extensive evidence suggesting that Fawwaz was working in London as a publicist for Al-Qaeda at the time of the attack.

In a closing argument at the federal court in New York, assistant US prosecutor Sean Buckley described al-Fawwaz as “Osama bin Laden’s bridge to the West.”

Fawwaz was listed as number 9 on an Al-Qaeda roster that US forces recovered in Afghanistan, the prosecutor said.

As part of his duties in London, Fawwaz organized for two reporters from US news outlets to interview bin Laden in his compound in Afghanistan prior to the embassy bombing.

The defendant also distributed to the media Al-Qaeda propaganda material, including a bin Laden’s fatwa calling for the killing of Americans.

Several copies of the fatwa were found in Fawwaz’s home in London after the Nairobi attack, along with an “Encyclopedia of Jihad,” Mr Buckley said, displaying a copy of the document.

Fawwaz sent materials such as satellite telephone components to Al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan and Sudan, Mr Buckley added.

Telephone records and transcripts of intercepted calls introduced as evidence showed that Fawwaz was in frequent contact with Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Mohammed Atef, who was killed in a US drone strike in 2001.

Fawwaz was further said to have remained in contact with Atef after the August 7, 1998 Nairobi bombing that killed 200 Kenyans and 12 Americans.

He was arrested in London in September 1998 and remained in custody in the United Kingdom until he was extradited to the US in 2012. (NMG)

HORRIBLE ATROCITIES

Defence attorney Bobbi Sternheim began her closing argument on Thursday by acknowledging the difficulty in persuading the jury of Fawwaz’s innocence, given the “horrible atrocities” committed by Al-Qaeda in Nairobi and in the nearly simultaneous bombing of the US embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Two Kenyans and two Tanzanians had earlier testified about the physical and psychological damages they have suffered as a result of the twin attacks.

Ms Sternheim said Fawwaz renounced bin Laden as it became clear in the mid-1990s that the Al-Qaeda leader was intent on carrying out mass violence.

She told the jury that bin Laden had turned “from hero to horror”.

Fawwaz had supported him when he helped lead the decade-long resistance against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan launched in 1979.

Fawwaz was “shocked, disturbed and angered by the very bad turn” bin Laden had taken, she added.

Prosecutors produced no evidence linking Fawwaz directly to terrorist actions, Ms Sternheim said.

There was also no proof that he had ever sworn allegiance to Al-Qaeda, she added.