Missing 727 Inspires Fear

ByABC News
July 9, 2003, 5:12 PM

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Missing 727 Figured in Embassy Closure

By the ABCNEWS Legal-Investigative Unit

June 27 Information that one of the FBI's 22 most-wanted terrorists was affiliated with a 727 plane operator in Africa sparked major concern last week for U.S. counterterrorism agencies that terrorists could conduct an aerial assault against the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, sources told ABCNEWS.

The intelligence is particularly alarming after a Boeing 727 disappeared in Africa May 25 when it mysteriously sped from a runway in Angola.

U.S. intelligence agencies are trying to trace the plane's whereabouts using satellites and human intelligence, but have not yet been able to locate it.

Read Pierre Thomas' reports on the plane: 727 Vanishes It's Never Happened Family Fears Pilot's Fate

Officials do not automatically link the aircraft's disappearance to terrorism, but sources say they are concerned that a man who currently operates 727 jets in Africa and who is described as a suspected former unofficial aviation adviser for the Taliban is affiliated with Fazul Abdullah Mohammed. Mohammed is an alleged al Qaeda operative who was indicted in the United States in the 1998 East African embassy bombings and is still at large.

The U.S. State Department closed its embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, for six days starting last Friday after the Defense Department learned that it was a specific target of a terrorist attack. Kenya has been on heightened alert status for more than a month due to a range of intelligence red flags signaling terrorist activity in the region, including the sighting of Mohammed near the Somali border several weeks ago, sources told ABCNEWS.

Intelligence officials also learned of a transfer of a cache of weapons into Kenya from Somalia, a large infusion of cash into a suspicious bank account in Kenya, and the transit into Kenya of one or more British nationals of Somali descent recently.