(6 Feb 2001) English/Nat
XFA
The first witness took the stand in the trial of four members of the al-Qaeda group charged with the bombing of two U-S embassies in 1998.
The Sudanese man, now living in the United States, testified after U-S District Judge Leonard B. Sand told courtroom artists they were not permitted to draw his face.
Referred to in court papers only as CS-1, Jamal Ahmed Alfadl has pleaded guilty to an unspecified terrorism charge in a deal that called for him to serve as a witness.
Alfadl said he was one of the first to swear allegiance to bin Laden's then-fledgling group, al-Qaeda.
He told the court that his commitment to the cause had been all encompassing.
He said he fought on the front lines of the war before going to more camps for training in explosives.
The bombs - believed to have been part of a worldwide conspiracy to kill Americans - went off nearly simultaneously at embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224 people - 201 Kenyans, 12 Americans, and 11 other Africans.
The prosecution has accused bin Laden of carrying out a decade long terrorism spree to coerce Islamic governments into a rejection of Western values and to embrace what the West would see as Islamic fundamentalism.
Bin Laden is on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List.
There is a 5 (m) million dollar reward for his capture in Afghanistan, where authorities believe he is in hiding.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"It seems like these are people who, you know who had a long plan well thought out and this was not something that was unexpected and it was something that probably our intelligence and certainly we know our government had knowledge of and so it was not something that was completely unforeseeable."
SUPERCAPTION: Edith Bartley, Victim's relative
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"I was fascinated by this issue of doing these things in the name of Allah, in the name of Islam and in that sense I'm not detached from it at all, in fact I was having a conversation with a family member about it and we were talking about how could individuals be convinced in the name of any religion to kill and maim like this on a consistent basis and it's still happening."
SUPERCAPTION: Robert Kirk Junior, Relative of victim
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"I myself was briefed by the embassy security officers some three days before the bombing and I asked the chap if we were confronted with a Khobar Towers type of an incident what would happen to us. And he told me quote unquote you'd be dead meat - three days later my wife was killed. And it's just really, really tragic and I just hope out of all of this the Congress will appropriate the money so that colleagues overseas will not have to go through what I had to go through."
SUPERCAPTION: Mr Kavaough, Relative of victim
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