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| TERRORISM ON TRIAL | |
 February 5, 2001  |
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After this background report on the embassy bombing trial, a
panel discusses the role of the courts in the fight against terrorism.
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MARGARET
WARNER: On the morning of August 7, 1998, bomb blasts shattered two
American embassies in East Africa. The near-simultaneous explosions
in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killed 224 people --
including 12 Americans -- and wounded 4,000 more. Within hours, US law
enforcement and intelligence agencies had launched a full-scale investigation
across the globe. Security was beefed up at US embassies and at government
buildings in Washington. But Secretary of State Madeleine Albright warned
that she didn't foresee an end to terrorism any time soon. 
MADELEINE
ALBRIGHT: I think it's very important for the American people to understand
that we are involved here in a long-term struggle. We have been affected
by this before. This is, unfortunately, the war of the future and I
think that we have to understand the importance of having sustained
operations here. 
MARGARET
WARNER: 13 days later, the US struck back. It aimed cruise missiles
at a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan -- alleged to be making chemical
weapons -- and at the site of several suspected terrorist training camps
in Afghanistan. 
US
officials said the attacks were not aimed at the countries that were
hit, but at a terrorist network created and financed by the man they
accused of masterminding the embassy attacks: Saudi exile Osama bin
Laden. Bin Laden is waging a declared holy war against the US and its
citizens. In the late 1980s, investigators say, the Saudi millionaire
organized a group called al Qaeda, drawing originally from the ranks
of Islamic men who had found common cause fighting the Soviet Union
in Afghanistan. 
Today,
investigators say, bin Laden oversees a far-flung network of terrorist
operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia and Kenya, all devoted
to attacking the United States and its interests around the globe. 
The
trial that began in New York today is the US government's most sweeping
legal attack yet against bin Laden and his network. The government's
indictment charges the four men on trial with conspiring to bomb the
two embassies, and for being part of bin Laden's worldwide terrorist
conspiracy. Eighteen other men were indicted, but most of them, including
bin Laden, are still fugitives or fighting extradition.
Two
of the defendants face the death penalty if convicted: Khalfan Khamis
Mohamed, a 27-year-old from Tanzania, who is implicated in the bombing
there; and 23-year-old Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali of Saudi Arabia,
who is implicated in the Nairobi attack.
The
other two defendants could get life in prison without parole: 35-year-old
Jordanian Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, accused of helping prepare the Nairobi
attack; and 40-year-old Wadih El-Hage, a naturalized American citizen
born in Lebanon, who prosecutors say served as one of bin Laden's most
trusted lieutenants. Security at the federal district courthouse is
tight, with dozens of armed US marshals and bomb sniffing dogs to check
every vehicle. Prosecutors expect the trial to last nine or ten months.