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Al-Qaeda 'In US Embassy Plot'
Nairobi, Kenya, October 25, 2003 (AP) – AL-QAEDA operatives planned to simultaneously drive a car bomb and fly a small plane laden with explosives into the US embassy in Nairobi in June, according to a Kenyan police account of the interrogation of a terror suspect.
The plot is detailed in a police statement seen by The Associated Press and could explain why the new US embassy in Nairobi closed on four days that month.
Salmin Mohammed Khamis, one of six men charged with murder for bombing a Kenyan hotel last November, told police of the plan after he was arrested on June 17.
His confession may also explain why days later Kenyan officials banned flights to and from Somalia, a lawless neighbour cited repeatedly as a terrorist haven.
The plot was documented in a statement by John M'mbijiwe, an investigator with the police anti-terrorism unit. The statement was one of 164 pretrial statements from witnesses and investigators collected by prosecutors, submitted to the court and obtained by The Associated Press overnight from a source.
While a Kenyan prosecutor declined to comment on the statements, he did confirm their existence and that they had been given to the court.
Khamis, a 27-year-old Kenyan who worked in a Mombasa hardware store, has been in police custody since his arrest in Mombasa and his lawyer could not confirm the contents of the statement.
The US Embassy refused to comment on M'mbijiwe's statement and Kenyan police officials were not immediately available. But in May a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said al-Qaeda was targeting foreign embassies in Kenya.
A travel advisory warning Americans not to travel to Kenya because of a terrorist threat remains in effect.
On June 21, a senior Kenyan security official, Dave Mwangi, said that for two months there had been rumours about a car bomb being assembled in Nairobi.
The trial of Khamis and the five others is set to begin on Monday and M'mbijiwe did not quote Khamis as saying anything about the attack on the hotel north of Mombasa, a bombing that killed 13 people, including three Israelis.
Khamis did, however, provide an insider's account of the embassy plot - for which he has not yet been charged.
M'mbijiwe, who interrogated Khamis hours after he was arrested, said Khamis deciphered a coded e-mail sent to him by Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a key suspect in the November attack who remains at large.
The e-mail, intercepted by police, "invited" Khamis to participate in "al-Qaeda activities", according to M'mbijiwe's statement.
Khamis then told M'mbijiwe of a meeting in May with six other al-Qaeda operatives, among them Nabhan and two unidentified Somalis and one unidentified Arab, according to the statement.
The men, meeting in the coastal town of Malindi, developed the plot to attack the embassy and "took an oath binding them together (in) secrecy", the statement said.
Khamis reportedly said that he was to drive a truck from Mombasa to Nairobi, according to the statement.
The registration number of the truck was included in M'mbijiwe's statement. Once there, Khamis was to load the truck with explosives assembled in a house in the Eastleigh neighbourhood, home to thousands of Somalis, the statement said.
"From Eastleigh the suspect was to drive the motor vehicle from the place to the US embassy with his friends on board, to carry (out) the suicide mission of the bombing of the Embassy."
Meanwhile, Nabhan and a second group were to charter a small plane at Nairobi's Wilson Airport and pretend they were heading to Somalia with a payload of "khat", a semi-narcotic leaf grown in central Kenya and chewed by many Somalis, the statement said.
Instead, they planned "to load a bomb called 'jumbo' and hijack the plane (and) bomb the US embassy simultaneously with the first group", M'mbijiwe said.
From the statement, it appears the day of the attack had not yet been set.
M'mbijiwe ends the statement writing: "The mission could have been accomplished."
Getting near the heavily fortified embassy with a truck would have been difficult, but small plane charters are readily available at Wilson, where few questions are asked and thousands of pounds of khat are flown each day to Somalia. Kenyan officials banned flights to Somalia from June 20 and July 8.
The same day the flight ban was imposed, the US embassy temporarily closed for four days after the Pentagon issued a terrorism alert and raised the threat level to "high".
The embassy reopened June 25, but the State Department still warns US citizens against nonessential travel Kenya.
In August 1998, terrorists detonated a car bomb outside the old US embassy, an attack that killed 219 people, including 12 Americans.
Al-Qaeda has taken credit for the embassy bombing and the attack on the hotel in November. Minutes before that bombing, unidentified assailants unsuccessfully tried to shoot down an Israeli-charter jet with shoulder-fired missiles as the plane was taking off from Mombasa's airport.
Israeli officials have said they suspect al-Ittihad al-Islami, a Somali Islamic group associated with al-Qaeda, in that attack.
In May, the United States and Britain first warned their citizens away from Kenya, and British Airways temporarily stopped flying to the country, citing an "imminent" terrorist threat.
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