'Embassy bomber' escapes raid
2008-08-03 21:25
Mombasa - A man accused of masterminding the bombings of two American embassies in East Africa ten years ago escaped a police raid early on Sunday, a senior Kenyan police officer said.
The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he could lose his job for making unauthorised statements to the press.
Fazul Abdullah Mohammed has a $5M bounty on his head for allegedly planning the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 225 people and injured more than 5 000.
Police said they discovered two of his passports and arrested two men accused of aiding him.
Fazul was apparently in Kenya to seek treatment for a kidney complaint, the officer said.
Kenyan police spokesperson Eric Kiraithe confirmed that the anti-terrorist unit had been conducting operations along the Kenyan coast but declined to comment further.
The 32-year-old suspected member of al-Qaeda is originally from the Comoros Islands.
He is also suspected of planning the nearly simultaneous car bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel, which claimed 13 lives, and a failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner in Kenya in 2002.
Fazul joined al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and trained there with Osama bin Laden before becoming a teacher at a religious school in northern Kenya in the mid-1990s.
He was captured by Kenyan police in 2002 for credit card fraud, but escaped after a day and fled to war-ravaged Somalia where authorities believe he has been hiding ever since.
- AP