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Jury hears and sees first account of lethal Kenya blast

larger   The aftermath of the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi

From CNN Producer Phil Hirschkorn

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Jurors were visibly upset by videotape showing the aftermath of the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, which was played during the trial of four men accused in connection with the two attacks.

As the 25-minute tape displayed rubble, rescue efforts, fires and a few charred bodies, one female juror held a hand over her heart, another covered her open mouth, while a third just shook her head.

The tape was played after former U.S. Ambassador Prudence Bushnell testified, telling jurors how she scrambled down a blood-soaked staircase and how she was sure she was going to die after a bomb-laden truck exploded near the embassy's rear entrance on August 7, 1998.

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Prosecutors also introduced as evidence a sketch resembling the embassy drawn by one of the alleged embassy bombers standing trial.

Bushnell offered the trial's most dramatic testimony, a detailed account of the Friday morning bombing two and a half years ago that killed 213 people, including 12 Americans who worked in the embassy, and injured more than 4,000 others.

Bushnell, who served as ambassador to Kenya from July 1996 through May 1999, was not in the embassy when the bomb exploded. She was on the top floor of the high-rise bank building next door, meeting with Kenya's trade minister.

"We all heard a very loud explosion," she said. "It sounded like construction."

The explosion was a stun grenade thrown at an embassy security guard, according to prosecution documents. Bushnell and her hosts rushed to the office windows to look outside.

"This huge explosion happened. I was thrown back," she said.

Bushnell covered her head with her hands. The ceiling caved in, furniture was overturned, papers scattered everywhere. "I thought to myself, the building was going to collapse, I was going to tumble down all those stories, and I was going to die."

Bushnell said she fell unconscious for a short while, came to, and then joined a hushed procession of Kenyans down the bank building's stairwell.

"There was blood everywhere on the banister. I could feel the person behind me bleeding onto me and my lower back," she said.

Some people prayed, some sang hymns. "There was no panic, which was amazing, and probably saved lives," Bushnell testified.

Not knowing the bombers' target, Bushnell's destination was the embassy's medical office -- until she got outside.

"I looked up and saw a burning vehicle. I saw the charred remains of what was once a human being. I saw the back of the [embassy] building totally ripped off. I saw utter destruction, and I knew no one was going to take care of me." Bushnell said.

larger   Smoke engulfed buildings after the explosion

The three-story yellow embassy building, built in the 1970s to withstand an earthquake, had not collapsed. But the seven-story office building and secretarial college next door did.

Bushnell spent part of her testimony describing a full-scale model of the site as it looked before the attack. Prosecutor Paul Butler led her through a series of post-bombing photographs showing aerial views of the destruction, bloody victims being led through the streets, and images of the ruined embassy interior.

"Another office -- used to be," she said of one photo, pausing to point out "somebody's red, white and blue notebook."

A bomb exploded almost simultaneous to the one in Kenya at the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 11 and injuring more than 85 others.

One defendant, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, a 27-year-old Tanzanian, is accused of a direct role in that bombing.

Two trial defendants, Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, 36, a Jordanian, and Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali, 24, a Saudi, are accused of a direct role in the Kenya bombing. The government alleges that al-'Owhali rode in the bomb truck and threw the stun grenade.

Bushnell used a model to explain the site before the bombing

Odeh told the FBI agent who interrogated him and testified Wednesday that he felt a moral sense of responsibility for the bombings because he was a member of al Qaeda, the Islamic militant organization led by Saudi exile Osama bin Laden that is accused of carrying out the attacks. Odeh denies a role in the embassy bombings.

But an August 1998 search of his Kenyan home yielded two hand-drawn sketches that, when held side-by-side to a blueprint of the U.S. Embassy, bore a resemblance to the compound and the path to the embassy garage where the bomb truck exploded. The prosecution presented the sketches into evidence Thursday.

The fourth defendant, naturalized American Wadih el Hage, 40, is not accused of taking part in the bombings. He is accused, like his three co-defendants, of participating in a decade-long conspiracy to kill Americans and destroy U.S. property -- a conspiracy allegedly led by bin Laden and carried out by al Qaeda.

Bushnell, who now serves as U.S. ambassador to Guatemala, told the court, "It's very difficult to be taken back" to the Kenya bombing.

During a brief cross-examination, al-'Owhali defense attorney David Baugh tried to probe whether there had been threats to embassy security and if Bushnell had warned Kenyans of those threats, but Judge Leonard Sand did not permit that line of questioning.

A government report on the embassy bombing two years ago found that Bushnell had requested security upgrades from the State Department and Defense Department but no improvements were made.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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