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Defendant connected to alleged Tanzania bombers

Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, one of the four defendants in the embassy bombings trial.

From CNN's Phil Hirschkorn & Deborah Feyerick

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A passport photo of one of the four men standing trial for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa was found at the house used by two men who bought a bomb truck, prosecutors told a jury on Wednesday.

The photograph of defendant Khalfan Khamis Mohamed was among the items seized during a search of the Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, residence used by Ahmed Ghailani.

According to prosecutors, Ghailani was one of the two men who purchased the Nissan Atlas refrigeration truck that carried the bomb that exploded at the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam on August 7, 1998, killing 11 people, including two embassy employees.

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Two witnesses later testified about knowing Mohamed in Tanzania but failed to identify him in open court.

The four men are on trial for the Tanzania bombing and the simultaneous attack of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, that killed 213 people.

Four witnesses testified Wednesday about the type of truck used in the Tanzania bombing, its sale, and its alterations in the weeks before the attack.

A former Nissan service manager, who is Japanese, told the court the truck could be identified by the vehicle identification number, MH40060500, stamped on a part of the right front frame recovered from bombing debris. The truck, powered by a diesel engine, could bear a 2-ton load, the witness said.

Mohamed Zaid, a Tanzanian driver, told the jury he bought the Nissan in June 1998 for about $5,000 and sold it in July for a little more than $6,000 to Ghailani and Sheik Ahmed Salim Swedan, two men the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York has charged for roles in the Tanzania embassy bombing.

Swedan and Ghailani are among 13 fugitives in the case who along with Saudi exile Osama bin Laden are accused of orchestrating both embassy bombings. Swedan was identified in previous testimony as the man who bought the Toyota Dyna truck used in the Kenya bombing.

The Tanzania truck sale was a cash transaction with no paperwork, Zaid said. He told the court he met to close the deal with the buyers at the place where Ghailani lived, 15 Amani Road in Dar es Salaam, and at the city's Al-Noor Hotel.

larger   Damage caused by the bomb blast at the U.S. embassy in Tanzania

Julius Kisingo, a Tanzanian welder, told the court that Swedan later hired him to alter the Nissan truck, making containers for batteries to be stored in the back and drilling holes to attach partitions that Swedan told him were for storing fish.

FBI searches of the Amani Road residence turned up evidence that included a bomb detonator and some passport photos. One of those photos, shown to jurors, was the same image of Mohamed that prosecutors made public when they charged him in the case in December 1998.

Two prosecution witnesses offered the trial's first accounts of the activities of Mohamed, saying they knew him personally, but found themselves unable to find him seated in the crowded court room in Manhattan's federal district courthouse.

Amina Rasheed said Mohamed was among those who frequently visited the Amani Road residence, where she cooked and cleaned. Other regular visitors included men she knew as "Fahad" and "Hussein," aliases respectively, prosecutors say, for alleged Tanzania bombing conspirators Fahid Mohamed Ally Msalam and Mustafa Mohamed Fadhil, both fugitives.

larger   Eleven people were killed and 85 were wounded in the explosion

The witness, Rasheed, stood and took her time looking around the court when asked if she saw K.K. Mohamed. She stared at the corner of the defense table where Mohamed sat, but she drew a blank.

Abdel Saulm, from Tanzania, testified he let Mohamed live in his two-family dwelling in Dar es Salaam for several months in 1998, and that he talked to Mohamed about his past, including Mohamed's military training in Afghanistan. But when asked, Saulm also failed to identify K.K. Mohamed anywhere in the courtroom.

Although Mohamed wears glasses in court and his beard has grown, of the four defendants his appearance has changed the least in the past two years.

Mohamed, a 27-year-old from Zanzibar, Tanzania, is the only defendant accused of a direct role in the Tanzania bombing.

Two defendants, Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali, a 24-year-old Saudi, and Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, a 36-year-old Jordanian, are charged with direct roles in the Kenya embassy bombing.

The fourth defendant, naturalized American Wadih el Hage, is charged only in the terrorist conspiracy behind the embassy bombings but not with a role in the attacks.

Wednesday was the second consecutive day the jury heard testimony and saw evidence on the Tanzania bombing, including a 16-minute video of the bombing aftermath filmed by Tanzania police.

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