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Defendant linked to U.S. embassy bombing pleads guilty

Ali Mohamed is the first person to plead guilty in connection with the embassy bombings in which 12 Americans were among the 224 killed

From CNN Producer Phil Hirschkorn

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A former U.S. Army officer pleaded guilty in Manhattan Federal Court Friday to five charges related to the alleged conspiracy to attack U.S. targets under the direction of exiled Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden.

Ali Mohamed, 48, an Egyptian-born naturalized U.S. citizen, pleaded guilty to five counts of conspiracy to kill Americans abroad and to destroy U.S. government buildings and military installations. He is one of 17 defendants charged in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.

Mohamed is not charged with the attack on the embassies' proper, but was charged with training Islamic militants abroad and with recruiting people to join the bin Laden network in the United States. According to prosecutors, those U.S. citizens would be used to deliver messages and engage in financial transactions for the benefit of bin Laden's terrorist organization, al Qaeda.

AUDIO CNN's Phil Hirschkorn reports from New York on Ali Mohamed's plea agreement AIFF or WAV sound  VIDEO ARCHIVE CNN's Kathleen Koch reports on the anniversary of the embassy bombings in Africa (Aug. 7, 1999) Windows Media    28K 80K  MESSAGE BOARD National security

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"These targets were selected to retaliate against the United States for its involvement in Somalia," Mohamed read to the court from a prepared statement.

Mohamed was a member of the U.S. Army at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, from 1985 to 1989, where he participated in training U.S. soldiers about the Muslim world. He had also sought to work as a translator for the FBI in 1993, according to prosecutors who said he used an alias when he applied for that position.

Judge Leonard Sand, who is presiding over the embassy bombings case, deferred acceptance of the plea and scheduled a target date for sentencing nine months from Friday. By agreeing to plead guilty to the charges, Sand said Mohamed faces no less than 25 years in prison.

Five other defendants are in custody in New York in the case, three are in custody in London, awaiting extradition to the U.S. and nine are at large, including the alleged mastermind, bin Laden.

Mohamed admitted helping to establish a terrorist cell for bin Laden in Nairobi in the early 1990s. He said he started surveillance on possible U.S., British, French and Israeli targets, including the U.S. embassy as early as 1993.

Mohamed referred to the 1984 bombing of the Marines barracks in Beirut, which precipitated the U.S. withdrawal from Lebanon. He said he and his co-conspirators intended to use "the same method to force the United States to pull out of Saudi Arabia."

More than 200 people were killed in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya, above, and Tanzania

He said that in 1994 he trained bin Laden's bodyguards in Sudan, where bin Laden had fled for a time. He also said he had provided military basic explosives training and intelligence training to the organization's fighters in Afghanistan.

Prior to the 1998 embassy bombings, a federal grand jury in New York was already investigating Mohamed and his possible ties to the bin Laden network. Mohamed was charged with lying to FBI agents in 1997 concerning his contacts with both bin Laden's group and to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, another organization that prosecutors believe merged with bin Laden's group in 1998.

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Patterns of Global Terrorism: 1999
FBI Websites Document Evidence Against Bin Laden
Dept of State/International Information Programs:
Ussamah Bin Laden
US District Court, Southern District of New York
U.S. State Department - Counterterrorism
The U.S. Embassy Dar Es Salaam Tanzania
FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives - Osama Bin Laden
Terrorism Research Center
Africa News on the World Wide Web
The 1998 US Embassy Bombings in Kenya and Tanzania

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