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Mohamed

By Phil Hirschkorn
CNN Producer

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The jury deciding the sentence for convicted Tanzania embassy bomber Khalfan Khamis Mohamed heard for the first time on Wednesday that the defendant has expressed remorse for the attack.

The jury convicted Mohamed of murdering the 11 people who died in the August 7, 1998, truck bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The bombing also wounded 85 people.

"He recounted to me that when he first saw the pictures of the bombed-out shells of the building, he was really horrified," said defense witness Jerrold Post, a psychiatrist and former CIA analyst. Post said "tears came to his (Mohamed's) eyes" as he spoke of "those innocent victims."

Post said the bomb plot leaders used Mohamed for unsophisticated logistical tasks, because he spoke Swahili, the language of Tanzania, and as a Tanzanian citizen, he could register a car and rent a safe house.

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"He accepts authority, he does what he is told to do," Post said. Mohamed did not know the target of the bombing until days before the attack.

"I now regret that I did not ask more questions about what they were doing," Post recalled Mohamed telling him.

Post depicted Mohamed as a loner, fatherless at the age of seven, who found acceptance as a teen-ager at his Dar es Salaam mosque.

"What they were told in the mosque was that it was the obligation of every good Muslim to join in the struggle, to help Muslims around the world as a member of this community," Post said. Mohamed became "consumed by a mission to become basically a soldier for Islam," because he wanted to fight alongside besieged Muslim populations in Bosnia and Chechnya.

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 DOCUMENTS Read al-'Owhali penalty phase closing arguments (June 5) (Findlaw) (PDF) Read al-'Owhali death penalty phase testimony (May 30-31)(Findlaw)(PDF) Documents in PDF format require Adobe Acrobat Reader for viewing.   GALLERY Images from the U.S. embassy bombing in Tanzania  Images from the U.S. embassy bombing in Kenya    MESSAGE BOARD Embassy bombing verdict

The jury earlier saw segments from a BBC documentary on Serbian atrocities in Bosnia, "Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation."

A friend encouraged Mohamed in 1994 to attend "jihad" camps in Afghanistan, where he learned to use guns and explosives and absorbed an extremist Islamic militant ideology. The camps were run by Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, the alleged sponsor of the Tanzania bombing and the coordinated bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, where 213 people died.

Post has recently met with Mohamed four times and once with convicted Kenya embassy bomber Mohamed Sadeek Odeh. Odeh, unlike Mohamed, was a sworn member of "al Qaeda," bin Laden's Islamic militant group, which Odeh said recruited low-level individuals to assist operations. Three years went by before al Qaeda cell leaders offered Mohamed a "jihad job."

Mohamed's statements to Post were a departure from the post-arrest sentiments he expressed to FBI agents who interrogated him 19 months earlier. FBI agent Abigail Perkins told the jury in March that Mohamed said "Allah would take care of" the killed Tanzanians and that Mohamed said he "would have continued in his efforts to kill Americans, including being involved in bombings" if he had not been caught.

The jurors, who've been on the job nearly six months, will probably hear their last day of testimony Thursday, as the death penalty phase winds down. Defense attorneys will end their case opposing his execution by calling Mohamed's family members to testify, including his mother and twin sister.

Mohamed's team is pushing the jury to opt for a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. One reason -- because of the grief his execution would cause his own family. Prosecutors are asking the jury to give weight to the impact the bombing deaths had on victims' families.