Man Pleads Guilty in U.S. Embassy Bombings

N E W   Y O R K, Oct. 21, 2000 -- A former U.S. Army sergeant pleaded guilty on Friday to conspiring with suspected terrorist kingpin Osama bin Laden in a sweeping plot to “attack any Western target in the Middle East.”

As part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, the 48-year-old Egyptian-born man, Ali Mohamed, who served in the Army for three years in the late 1980s, admitted to conspiring with bin Laden and others to murder Americans all over the world.

Mohamed pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges related to the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, which killed more than 200 people, including a dozen Americans.

He is the first person to plead guilty in connection with the bombings and is an important element in the Justice Department’s efforts to build a case that bin Laden and others were responsible for the attacks.

He said he conspired along with bin Laden and others to attack the U.S. military in Somalia and Saudi Arabia, to kill Americans at unspecifiedembassies, and to conceal the conspiracy.

He was led into the courtroom in leg shackles, and stood in his prisonblue uniform as he pleaded guilty to five counts.

“The objective of all of this was to attack any Western target in the Middle East,” Mohamed said during his plea, according to The Associated Press.

Worldwide Terrorism Conspiracy

Mohamed said bin Laden plays a key role in a massive conspiracy by members of an Islamic jihad to target U.S. military installations and embassies worldwide.

U.S. officials said they have evidence Mohamed had ties to bin Laden within a year or two after he was honorably discharged from the Army in 1989.

Mohamed also admitted he helped move bin Laden from Pakistan to Sudan and trained members of a terrorist organization linked to bin Laden, al Qaeda.

He was among 17 people named in an indictment that resulted from the Aug. 7, 1998, bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which the United States accuses bin Laden of masterminding. Five other persons listed in the indictment are in federal custody, three more are undergoing extradition proceedings in Britain, and eight others are still at large, including bin Laden.

Mohamed faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole.

Taught Army Specialists

The former sergeant, ironically, had taught U.S. Special Forces troops at Fort Bragg, N.C. A former Egyptian military officer, Mohamed was living in the United States as a resident alien when he joined the Army.

His duties included teaching soldiers in the special forces about Muslim culture.

Mohamed was taken into custody in October 1998 on charges of lying to federal agents investigating bin Laden’s network.

He had lied about his connections to bin Laden and associated organizations and to the Department of Defense about his previous associations and travel history, according to charges filed by the Justice Department in 1998.

Investigators have said videotapes of Mohamed training at a special warfare center at Fort Bragg and classified military documents he had access to turned up in some very suspicious places.

The FBI found them in the home of Sayyid Nosair, a suspected terrorist later convicted in a plot to blow up American landmarks.

ABCNEWS’ John Miller contributed to this report.