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Investigators raid Nairobi hotel where bomb reportedly was made
In this story:
August 19, 1998Web posted at: 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT)
NAIROBI, Kenya (CNN) -- Investigators acting on information from a suspect in the U.S. Embassy bombing raided a Nairobi hotel where the bomb was believed to have been made, a Kenyan newspaper reported Wednesday.
Fifteen U.S. FBI agents and six Kenyan detectives wearing bulletproof vests carried away several boxes from the raid Tuesday, according to the Daily Nation.
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The August 7 attack in downtown Nairobi killed 247 people. An almost simultaneous bombing killed 10 at the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
The suspect who gave the information for the raid, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, was arrested August 7 in Pakistan and returned August 14 to Kenyan authorities investigating the blast, according to the Kenyan newspaper.
No comment
Kenyan police and U.S. authorities did not inform the media about the reported raid Tuesday and declined to comment on the latest reported developments.
In Pakistan, meantime, a border official said a Saudi and a Sudanese were detained at the Afghan border and were being questioned about the bombings. The men were stopped Saturday, said Bakhtiar Khan, chief of the Pakistani border post near the northern city of Peshawar.
The New York Times also reported Wednesday that a Saudi and a Sudanese were arrested at the Afghan border. The newspaper said Odeh had named the men as accomplices.
The Daily Nation report said a bomb containing 800 kilograms (1,760 pounds) of TNT was assembled over several days in the Hill Top Hotel, which was not listed in the Nairobi telephone directory.
A man who answered the telephone at the Hilltop Lodge and identified himself as the night clerk, Omar Jana, told The Associated Press Wednesday that agents had stormed the hotel Tuesday.
Jana said police arrested manager James Nganga and took the hotel's guest register.
The newspaper report was the first word of the raid. FBI, Kenyan and Tanzanian police were remaining largely silent on the progress of their investigation into the bombings.
Frank Scafidi, an FBI spokesman in Washington, said he could not confirm the newspaper's report. "It's entirely possible, I just don't know," he said.
The report said the hotel rooms where the bomb was made -- rooms 102 and 107 -- were occupied from August 3-7 by four people involved in the bombing -- two Palestinians, an Egyptian and a Saudi Arabian. On the day of the bombing, they were said to have completed assembly of the explosive in a pickup truck and driven it to the U.S. Embassy downtown.
Odeh reportedly chief assembler of bomb
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| Osama bin Laden | |
Citing unidentified sources, the newspaper said Odeh was the chief assembler of the bomb, and flew out of Nairobi August 6 after ensuring that the final preparations were in place. It said he is believed to have had five accomplices, three of whom died in the bombing, with the other two still at large.
In Islamabad, The News said Odeh, during a week of questioning by Pakistani intelligence officials, revealed that he is a member of a secretive guerrilla group led by Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, who is in hiding in Afghanistan.
Odeh claimed the group has successfully targeted U.S. interests in countries including Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the newspaper said.
Odeh, identified as a 34-year-old Palestinian engineer, claimed to be an expert at handling shoulder-fired U.S. Stinger missiles. The United States supplied such missiles to Afghan forces fighting a Soviet invasion in their country in the 1980s, and bin Laden was among those who fought alongside Afghans.
