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Deborah Feyerick: Trial will hear from ex-bin Laden aide

Deborah Feyerick

CNN Correspondent Deborah Feyerick has been following the case of the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania since the first indictments were handed down. She was in court in New York for the start of the trial of four men accused of a range of charges connected with the attacks.

Q: Were there special security precautions for this trial?

FEYERICK: Security around the Federal Courthouse in Lower Manhattan was especially tight. Not only were there metal detectors on the first floor as you enter the building, but there were also specially installed metal detectors on the third floor of the courthouse, and the only way to get to that floor was by receiving a special pass from U.S. marshals.

Inside the courtroom, the defendants were already sitting at the tables by the time the jury walked in. The reason for that is that each of them is shackled, their feet are shackled. That is an extra security precaution taken because during one of the earlier hearings a defendant leapt the table and charged towards the judge. In order to not bias the jury, a cloth, a drape has been set up around the tables so that jurors will not see that the defendants' feet are manacled.

CASE FILE Shattered Diplomacy: The U.S. Embassy Bombings Trial An in-depth special report on the trial of four men charged with the embassy bombings Trial reports | Timeline | Key Figures

MESSAGE BOARD Embassy bombing trial

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Q: Did you get a sense from the opening statements whether the prosecutors seem confident of their case?

FEYERICK: The prosecution gave their opening statements. They came across very confident. They feel that they have enough evidence to convict the four defendants of all of the charges that they have been accused of, including the (charges of) worldwide terrorist conspiracy, but also, in two cases, the murder counts for each of the victims who died in the embassy bombing blasts -- that's more than 200 Kenyans, Tanzanians and Americans who were killed when the two coordinated bombs exploded on August 7, 1998.

Q: Did we learn anything new about the prosecution case from their opening statements?

FEYERICK: In many of the indictments the prosecutors have laid out a sequence of events and what grounds they used in order to charge the defendants. What we did hear today that was interesting was that they will be calling a confidential informant, someone who was very close to Osama bin Laden, but who went on the run after stealing money from the billionaire Saudi exile. He is expected to be among the first witnesses to testify.

Q: I understand that some of the defendants acknowledged links to Osama bin Laden.

FEYERICK: Three of the defense attorneys linked their clients to Osama bin Laden, but they said that although there were connections, none of the defendants participated in any type of conspiracy against Americans, as federal prosecutors allege. One of the defense attorneys said his client was a businessman, hired to help run bin Laden's legitimate businesses. Another defense attorney said that his client was a soldier, a bin Laden soldier, fighting the war in Afghanistan, but certainly not the "holy war" against Americans.

Q: How long is this trial expected to last?

FEYERICK: It will be a very long trial. Prosecutors expect it to go on for as long as nine months, which means it may not conclude until Thanksgiving of this year. But the jury was attentive, they were listening and it will be very interesting to see whether the attention holds for the duration.

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Links to United States Embassies and Consulates Worldwide
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
Terrorism Research Center
Africa News on the World Wide Web

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